Colorado wilderness is commonly conceived of as a place of pleasurable recreation where individuals can experience peace and freedom in a natural environment. Both the "Received Wilderness Idea" -- created primarily in the 19th century by Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir -- and the "Wilderness Act of 1964" establish this notion of wilderness. Although wilderness is seemingly open to everyone, wilderness visitors are overwhelmingly white and affluent. Scholars generally trace the inequity of wilderness to the colonial construction of a dualistic concept of wilderness, and to the empty land doctrine. This study explicates how the concept of wilderness was formed, and how the concept empowers racially and economically privileged individuals.

The purpose of this thesis, however, is to go beyond the formation of wilderness to explore why wilderness remains extremely racially exclusive. This study asserts that to fully illuminate the concept of wilderness, its particular way of hiding social dynamics must be examined. Therefore, wilderness is situated within Henri Lefebvre's spatial framework. White epistemological bias is also illuminated, as is the way racism works to uphold American upper-class economic power. The problematic intersection of a nature-humanity dualism with socio-economic inequality, which contributes to the space of wilderness, also illuminates the link between environmental and social (in)justice. This thesis argues that it is the interconnection between these various factors -- constructions of place and identity, the colonial construct of empty land, spatial and epistemological concealment, and the relationship between race and class -- that maintains the exclusive space of wilderness. This study utilizes interdisciplinary methodology to show that it is the integration of several nefarious and racially-motivated concepts of concealment that make wilderness inequitable.

A social justice ethos informs this study. Critical Theory and philosophical analysis are employed to provide a social constructionist and epistemological critique. Additionally, a Coda (Chapter VI) is included in this thesis in order to honor the embodied aspect of wilderness experience, and to offer an ontological means of conceptualizing wilderness as a more inclusive space. It is suggested that the ambiguous and mysterious concept of "wildness" might be used to inform a new notion of wilderness.