The Wilderness Act of 1964 created the National Wilderness Preservation System — federal land with no roads, no permanent structures, and no motorized or mechanized wayfinding infrastructure allowed inside it. That makes it one of the hardest places in the country to describe a precise location — and one of the best places to show what a short, speakable @ Code can do.
Wilderness areas are huge. A bare @nnnn repeats every 1 km, so inside a 1,000,000-acre area it would recur hundreds of times — it blows up. nnnn@nnnn adds the 10 km and 100 km digits, so the same code does not repeat for 100 km in any direction: the MLS is 100 km and the MSS is about 15,000 square miles. Every format resolves to the same underlying 10-meter cell; they differ only in how far the code stays unique:
| nnnn@nnnn | default here — repeats every 100 km · unique across ~40,000 sq km (>15,000 sq mi) |
| nn@nnnn | switch — repeats every 10 km · ~400 sq km (>150 sq mi) |
| @nnnn | switch — repeats every 1 km · ~4 sq km (>1.5 sq mi) |
| UNLR | switch — zone ID + nnnn@nnnn.nn (1 m): unique worldwide, built for machines |
Most of the 806 areas are smaller than 100 km across, so nnnn@nnnn never repeats inside them. A handful of the largest — Boundary Waters and Frank Church here, plus giants like Death Valley or the Alaska wildernesses — stretch further than 100 km, so the same 8-digit code can legitimately appear twice, in two different 100 km squares. Select one of those two areas to see it happen, and to give each repeat a short disambiguating name (a compass direction, or one you choose) the way you'd add "North lot" or "South lot" to a street address.
Click the map to drop a pin. Each pin has a card with Where else?, Share this location, Other formats (the same spot in other systems) and Advanced options. Cards and panels drag by their top bar or any edge, and a leader line follows to the pin. Pills can be dragged clear of the map; double-click a pill to snap it back.
Full, surveyed boundaries exist for all 806 areas (Wilderness.net / Wilderness Connect), but these five are simplified, hand-traced outlines — recognizable in shape and true to each area's approximate size, not survey-accurate — chosen to cover the range: two compact areas that fit easily inside one 100 km square, one right at the edge, and two large enough to cross grid lines.