The U.S. Forest Service first bought land in this drainage in 1913 for what was then called Shenandoah National Forest, a predecessor to the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Much of the upper basin had never been logged - a rarity east of the Mississippi, where commercial timber operations swept through the Appalachians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1935 the Forest Service was managing the Ramsey's Draft area essentially as wilderness, decades before the 1964 Wilderness Act gave that designation legal meaning. Congress formally protected the core 6,518 acres under the 1984 Virginia Wilderness Act. Citizens have proposed expanding it ever since. The county board of supervisors has remained the most reliable opposition.

Ramsey's Draft is best known for its stands of old-growth eastern hemlock, particularly along the northern reaches of the draft. Some of these trees are well over 300 years old, with trunks several feet thick and crowns sheltering everything beneath them. Walking among them is to walk in a forest type that once covered much of the eastern mountains and now survives in only scattered remnants. The hemlock woolly adelgid - a tiny invasive insect from East Asia - has been killing eastern hemlocks throughout the Appalachians since the late 20th century. Ramsey's Draft is no exception. The stands here may not last the century. The forest service has tried biological control programs, but the science is racing the spread, and the spread is winning. Tulip poplars, sugar maples, eastern white pines, and northern red oaks share the canopy and may inherit it.

The main Ramsey's Draft Trail follows the streambed and what remains of the old CCC road. After the 1985 flood, the Forest Service rebuilt the trail, which now requires multiple stream crossings - more than thirty, by some counts - and is impassable in high water. One guidebook calls it one of the most popular trails on Virginia's roadless lands. Other paths spider out through the wilderness: Jerry's Run, Shenandoah Mountain, Road Hollow, Bald Ridge, Wild Oak, Sinclair Hollow, Hiner Spring. The Shenandoah Mountain Trail along the western ridge is part of the long-distance Great Eastern Trail project. The only remaining structure inside the wilderness is the chimney of Sexton Cabin along Jerry's Run; the Forest Service removed the cabin itself in the 1980s when it interpreted the Wilderness Act to prohibit any structures, then reversed course years later. The logs ended up rebuilt into the Mutton Top Cabin maintained by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club outside the wilderness.

Ramsey's Draft is small as wildernesses go - just over ten square miles - but it represents a particular kind of preservation that is hard to recreate elsewhere. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources notes that the high-elevation forest provides nesting grounds for neotropical migrant songbirds that typically nest much further north or at higher altitudes. Over 250 species of vascular plants have been catalogued here. The draft feeds the Calfpasture River, which feeds the James, which feeds the Chesapeake Bay - a small mountain stream connected to a continental drainage. Friends of Shenandoah Mountain has worked for years to expand the wilderness designation and add a national scenic area. The proposal is supported by a long list of businesses, organizations, and faith groups. Whether the political will follows remains an open question.