Montana Wilderness Association was founded in 1958 by Ken and Florence Baldwin. The grassroots organization's mission was and is to preserve wilderness and influence policy on public land management. MWA began as a group of individuals sharing the goal of protecting the heritage of Montana's wildlands and securing the proper management of public lands. The group was inspired by similar wilderness oriented individuals and associations around the nation at the time. John Muir had recently founded the Sierra Club and was very active in protecting Yosemite; Aldo Leopold wrote about the ethics involved in conservation and was a co-founder of the Wilderness Society; Bob Marshall wrote several essays about conservation in forestry publications and was also a founder of the Wilderness Society. MWA is the nation's premiere Wilderness grassroots organization and was significantly influential in the passing of the Wilderness Act by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. With the passing of this Act came the designation of the first Wilderness areas: The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Cabinet Mountains, the Gates of the Mountains, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness.