Utah ATV Access Dispute

[Nemont]

ATV dispute steams Box Elder landowners

Battle over access: At issue is whether riders may use roads on private property on their way to public lands

By Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune



BRIGHAM CITY - Abiathar R.C. Smith was just 18 when he emigrated from Worcestershire, England, in 1870, to live with an uncle in Kaysville.
By the time he died in 1909, "the sheep king of Utah" had amassed 212,000 acres of forest and meadowland in the northern Utah backcountry where Cache, Box Elder and Weber counties meet.
Nearly a century later, descendants who own a remnant of Smith's empire, along with several longtime ranchers, are at the center of a dispute that pits private property rights against access to public lands in Box Elder County.
The explosion in the number of all-terrain vehicle riders and the growing damage to land and wildlife, they say, has changed their willingness to ignore trespassers.
Many ATV riders don't care whose land they trash - or whether it has been in a family for generations, landowners say. Their solution: Make roads through their property off-limits.
That is not going to happen, though - at least in Box Elder County.
"This issue is closed!" Commission Chairman Scott Hansen declared four times, banging a gavel for emphasis, at the end of a rancorous public meeting.
It's a conflict that has been brewing throughout the West for the past decade, as counties stake claim to roads leading to federal lands. The counties' motivation is the fear that those lands could be declared wilderness and closed to motorized travel.
Cities such as Brigham City, Perry and Mantua are increasingly looking at nearby public land as a tourist magnet. They're eager to see more ATV-trail development.
According to the Forest Service, the number of ATV registrations in Utah's five northernmost counties rose 156 percent between 1998 and 2003. A quarter of all Utah ATV users live from Davis County north, and they're pushing hard for more and better trails on public lands. The trouble, however, is this: There's often no way to reach the public part of Utah's backcountry quilt without crossing over patches of private land.

Ancestral lands: Abiathar Smith's descendants, who still have 2,560 acres in the Devil's Gate Valley south of Mantua, say the number of trespassing ATV riders has skyrocketed since Box Elder County adopted an "access-management plan" in 2000. That plan formally declared the road through the valley to be a public - albeit dirt - road.
Maps going back to 1854 label it a public road and Amy Hugie, county attorney, said it has always been a public road.
The Smith family for decades has considered it a private road and, with the LDS Church, which owns a camp in the area, has made routine improvements.
Riders have always ignored the big boulder labeled "No Trespassing" that rests next to the entrance to the road. When the family had a wire cable stretched across to block trespassers, it was repeatedly pulled down, says Skip Warner, a great-grandson of Abiathar Smith.
Family members, who with other landowners in the region are working with the Sierra Club and other conservation groups, have documented ripped up meadows, scarred hillsides, mud bogs, downed fences and trashed private-property signs.
"Why does there have to be a trail through private property?" asks Warner's cousin, Valene Peterson. "Let them put ruts around their own houses."
The Devil's Gate Valley Road provides the bridge between two pieces of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, one down the backbone of the Wasatch Range to the west of the valley and the other, on the east, stretching from Cache Valley to Ogden Valley.
Now that the county has declared Devil's Gate Valley Road public, the Ogden Ranger District of the forest is proposing in its new travel plan to open the Public Grove Road on the east side.
That would allow recreationists to ride ATVs from Mantua to the Great Western Trail. The forest road between Avon and Liberty has been declared part of that trail.

One big loop: The Selman family, ranchers from Tremonton who raise cattle on 7,000 acres along the Box Elder-Cache county line, are not happy about the prospects of more ATV riders on their land east of Mantua, along the Rocky Dugway and south.
The access-management plan, updated last May, now shows as a public road a stretch of what they consider a "livestock driveway" that leads south from the Rocky Dugway Road to Weber County and onto the forest.
A 1998 county map did not show the road, which has two unlocked gates, as public, but the latest access plan shows it as a public link to Three Mile Road in the forest and on to the Great Western Trail.
Hugie says the county has always considered it a public road.
The idea of the access-management team, says Chip Sibbernsen, ranger for the Ogden District, was to create a bigger loop for ATV riders to start and end their rides at Mantua.
That's what Bret Selman is worried about.
Damage from ATVs is evident, but not as severe as in Devil's Gate Valley farther south, he says.
"Make the loop and they'll be there," he says.
Sibbernsen says he's not unsympathetic to the landowners.
The forest, too, has seen the devastation caused by illegal ATV use. In fact, Dale Bosworth, head of the U.S. Forest Service and a former Ogden district ranger, has identified unrestricted motorized travel as one of the four biggest threats to the country's forest.
The travel plan for the Ogden District, now being updated for the first time in 17 years, would give ATV riders good trails, signs, kiosks and maps so they will know where they can ride, says Sibbernsen. ATV riders would get 12 more miles of trails under the plan alternative preferred by the district.
Sibbernsen believes a team of government agencies and ATV-user groups can successfully educate and monitor ATV use so the abuse is stopped.
Harper Johnson of Mantua, a self-described "power freak" who rides a motorbike, says the only cure for the bad actors is a good network of well-marked trails and peer pressure from responsible riders.
"As soon as they try to keep everybody out, they'll only have that select group - the bad guys," says Johnson. "If you have a loop trail, 99 percent of the riders will stay on it. Give us a place to ride and we can take care of it ourselves."
Sibbernsen is optimistic. "We have a lot of tools in the tool bag and we're going to use all of them," he says. "It could take five or 10 years to get on top of this."

Why would giving ATVers a place to ride lead to them "take care of ourselves"? They haven't even begun to put a dent in illegal riding but giving them more trails will lead to better enforcement? The ATV crowd doesn't respect private property or the FS rules now, what would change with a loop trail?

Nemont

 

[Ten Bears]

Maps going back to 1854 label it a public road and Amy Hugie, county attorney, said it has always been a public road.
The Smith family for decades has considered it a private road and, with the LDS Church, which owns a camp in the area, has made routine improvements.

Just claiming the road doesn't make it private.

 

[MattK]

TB- If I were the LDS church and the property owner, I would sue for maintenance on the road for the time it had been there. I believe that would cost Utah a tidy sum. I would also make them buy the right away at fair market value. (Also the fencing etc.) If the county wants to claim ownership to the road, they should be stuck with the bill for maintaining it. If I were the property owner, I would create a new road for my own use and quit taking care of the trail.

ATVers are putting a noose on their own necks. Given enough time, they will hang themselves. I believe it will be done sooner than later.

 

[Ten Bears]

If I were the property owner, I would create a new road for my own use and quit taking care of the trail.

MATTK, that's about the only thing you said that came even close to making sense.