Town defers position on Bear Ranch land exchange

Discussion “postponed
indefinitely”

The Crested Butte Town Council was apparently inundated with so much information and so many opinions concerning a proposed land exchange near Paonia that they “postponed indefinitely” consideration of support for the proposal.

At the Tuesday, January 17 council meeting, mayor Aaron Huckstep took the item off the agenda saying that “the council had received a lot of comments over the issue and some council members needed time to process the information.” No date was set to return to the issue.
Land exchange advocate Tom Glass of the Western Land Group, Inc. had asked the council for a letter of support at the January 3 meeting. The council asked the town staff to gather information on the exchange and Town Parks and Rec director Jake Jones provided a ten-page report with other political letters of support.
Basically, billionaire Bill Koch would obtain 1,846 acres of BLM land in six parcels near the property that would tie the Bear Ranch together. Bear Ranch sits in Gunnison County but is 20 miles west of Crested Butte over Kebler Pass. In exchange, Koch would purchase parcels of land near the Curecanti National Recreation Area, Dinosaur National Monument, Marble, Paonia and Erickson Springs, and give the property or rights of way to the public.
Since that January 3 meeting, the council members have received numerous letters for and against the proposal from people living in the North Fork Valley. Huckstep said he had talked to Glass Tuesday and Glass agreed to have the issue taken off the agenda.
Vocal land exchange opponent Ed Marston made the trip from the North Fork to Crested Butte for the council meeting. “Man, that’s a long drive when Kebler Pass isn’t opened,” he noted. “Mr. Glass was here last week giving his version and I’m here tonight. This issue has been before the public for a year and a half. The Koch team wants 1,800 acres of public land in exchange for about 1,000 acres. They are also offering some rights-of-way off of McClure Pass but that is inferior to the BLM strip of land they want. It’s not about ranching. It is about privacy.
“Mr. Koch has done us a favor,” Marston told the council. “Not a lot of people knew about that access. It wasn’t signed. The hunters and fishermen kept it quiet and treated it like a private reserve. But that strip of land provides prime access to 40 square miles of land in the Raggeds Wilderness. Someone in the public meeting in Paonia last week said that most of the best places are at the end of a tough-to-drive dirt road. This is one of them and the dirt road isn’t that tough to drive.”
Marston said the issue has provided an opportunity for people affected by the exchange to start looking to the future. “It is a good time to think about that country as a whole,” he said. “Paonia and your town are growing together. As the coal mines over there go out of business, the valley will open up. Somerset will start to look like Ouray. That’s how Crested Butte got started. This was a mining town that turned into a resort community. This extended struggle has made me realize we all need to come together and think about the future as a whole and not piecemeal.”
Huckstep thanked Marston for making the trip. No other comments about the exchange were made by the council or the public, and the council took no action.