The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Maintains road is public
[ By Katherine Nettles ]
There is a new development regarding an ongoing case of a road closure above Lake Irwin, and Gunnison County is now asking the Gunnison District Court to declare Green Lake Road public, under both federal and state law. The county filed a motion for summary judgment in the Green Lake Road lawsuit on March 19.
Private landowner Jonathan (J.W.) Smith erected a gate along the road that crosses his property in 2016. The road leads to Green Lake between Ruby and Owen peaks, and Smith alleged that he installed the gate due to frustration with increased traffic and trespassing on his property from the road and along the popular Scarp Ridge hiking trail. However, other local property owners formed a coalition and filed a lawsuit arguing the action was illegal. John Biro et al and The Lake Irwin Coalition then named both Gunnison County and the U.S. Forest Service to the lawsuit in 2019, and the county has since maintained that the road is a public one.
The county’s initial response in 2019 was to ask that the USFS declare the road to be a Forest Service road, but that was unsuccessful. Quoting a former court statement within the district, the latest motion stated, “In Colorado it is far easier for a road to become public than for it to cast off its public status. This reality in part reflects the historic importance of public land, and the right of everyday citizens, not just the privileged, to travel freely and to enjoy the great landscapes of this state.”
The county has now asserted that Green Lake Road is a public road under federal statute; that Green Lake Road is a public highway under Colorado Law; and that the location of the road has remained consistent and well used by the public over its 100-plus year history.
The county’s motion document traces a thorough history establishing its argument that Green Lake Road is, and has always been, public. Mine workers built and used roads to access the mines and mining claims in the Ruby Mining Area between 1879 and 1882. The area was briefly part of a Ute reservation through an 1868 treaty between the U.S. with the Ute Tribe, then removed by Congress in 1982. At that point, the motion states, the president restored portions of the reservation, including the Ruby Mining Area, to the public domain. That same year, Gunnison County commissioners designated two roads as county roads, one of which became known later as the Green Lake Road. The county’s motion states that, “By March 1882 miners, prospectors and the general public regularly used Green Lake Road for both mining and recreational purposes.”
The document also asserts “Defendant J.W. Smith has admitted to the public’s use of the Green Lake Road;
“Defendant Smith has himself used the Green Lake Road for purposes other than solely to access his private mining claim;
“Nothing in the historical record regarding Green Lake Road evidences any attempt by any Ruby Mining Area claim owner to gate the road or otherwise prevent the public from using it until Mr. Smith erected his gate in 2016.”
The county also maintains that the road’s location and path has remained consistent throughout geologic surveys despite various avalanches and other natural hazards, and that the U.S. Forest Service has included the road on travel maps and visitor guides since 1918 showing the road as open for travel. Archived photographs from 1883 “depict heavily-used Green Lake Road,” and from 1994 to 2000, “mining claim owners within the Ruby Mining area executed easements and rights away acknowledging public travel along the Green Lake,” according to the document.
“Any or all of this evidence of use demonstrates that the public accepted Green Lake Road under [federal statute] as early as 1879, thus readily establishing the acceptance element,” the county argues. “The undisputed facts entitle Plaintiffs to judgment as a matter of law that the Green Lake Road was and is a public road.”
County attorney Matthew Hoyt predicted it will be at least six weeks before briefing on the new motion is complete. “And then we have no idea when the Court might render a decision.”
