The Utah Wilderness Association collection is broken down into record groups, series, and sub-series. There are ten record groups ranging in size from two or three boxes to seventy-six. The first record group is Administration and contains all of the membership and volunteer files, minutes from board meetings, flyers, events, general press releases about the organization, and fundraising information. The second record group, and largest, is the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). The Utah Wilderness Association spent a great deal of time appealing decisions by the BLM regarding Utah's wilderness. (Most of these files are located in the BLM: General Wilderness Files series.)

The remaining BLM record group is divided into series by geographical area, for example Vernal District and Richfield District. The Forest Service record group which is as large as the BLM, is similarly broken down into geographical regions. After the initial series of Forest Service: Wilderness Files and Forest Service: General Files, which apply to files covering broad forestry issues in Utah, subsequent series have a tighter focus and contain files relating to one specific forest or national forest in Utah. A similar record group, Forest Planning, follows. Containing only thirteen boxes, Forest Planning houses information pertaining to policy, growth, and ecosystem management in forestry. The National Park record group contains files for the national parks in Utah, such as Arches, Capital Reef, and Zion, each within its own series. General Environmental Issues is a catch-all record group. It contains files on air quality, energy issues, public opinion on uses of natural resources, and wildlife issues. The Wildlife series only has six boxes, but houses all the information on bear baiting, cougar and Sandhill crane hunting, all of which the UWA strongly opposed.

The Utah Wilderness Act record group contains five boxes chronicling the fight for protecting Utah's wild lands. The record group contains public comments to state legislators, notes and papers from state hearings in Utah, as well as from the U.S. House and Senate Hearings. Box 5 contains hundreds of news clippings and press releases about the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984, including articles about the 1985 dedication of the wilderness areas.

The collection ends with three small record groups, the first of which is RARE II. This group contains files on the Roadless Area Review Evaluation of 1978, including many journal and magazine articles, maps, and specific data on areas studied. The Utah Wilderness Association Review newsletters are housed in the UWA Reviews record group. The newsletter was produced bi-monthly from 1981-1996. This collection is incomplete, but additional Utah Wilderness Association Reviews are located in another area of Special Collections (call numbers 591.9792 W645n and 591.9792 W645r). The final record group is labeled Maps and contains two boxes. The maps pertain to wilderness areas in Utah and Idaho, mostly national forests.