"[2] He became a member of the Conservation Committee of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club, where he became close friends with attorney and Knoxville-native Harvey Broome, one of the eight founders of The Wilderness Society.
Dickerman was recruited by The Wilderness Society to organize public opposition to a proposal to build a second trans-mountain highway through 22 miles (35 km) of remote ridges and forests of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Bryson City, North Carolina, to Townsend, Tennessee.
Dickerman traveled the country, giving speeches and organizing hikes in order to raise public awareness of the damage such a project would inflict on the park.
[4] After that victory, Dickerman's main goal was to apply the newly passed Wilderness Act of 1964 to the eastern United States.
His intense lobbying paid off when, in 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act.
Soon after his retirement, he was elected president of the Virginia Wilderness Committee, and he served as mentor to a new generation of conservationists and lobbyists for wild land protection.