Wilderness Behind The Velvet Rope - BLM's Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

How do you run a popular semi-wilderness area right next to a major city? The Bureau of Land Management's Red Rock NCA seems like a good model for how to do it. Two million visitors a year!  Still, I felt pretty estranged from the semi-wilderness. It felt like the American West of the distant future - carefully held apart from actual contact.  And probably no other choice.  Fortunately, there are other parts of the West that are not nearly so popular and all too real.