The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Keeping the wetlands wet
By Mark Reaman
One of the most high-profile parcels of land in the North Valley will be conserved as the Crested Butte Land Trust (CBLT) has completed the $3.8 million in funding needed to close on 90 acres of wetlands along the Slate River Road near Gothic Road. Described as “being right in the bullseye of CBLT’s 35-year conservation strategy,” the 90-acre Kapushion-Spehar parcel is more than 50% wetlands near the Slate River with buildable land along Slate River Road. It is the final of four major parcels prioritized by the CBLT in the last year.
“At the risk of sounding cliche, we couldn’t have pulled this off without first bringing together a broad coalition from across the community,” said CBLT executive director Jake Jones. “Local government, non-profits, full-timers, part-timers, new-comers, old-timers, volunteers and staff members all helped make it happen. We can never be sure when a landowner is ready to conserve or sell their land, but we try to keep an ear to the ground and make sure we have a chance to discuss high conservation value properties before they are sold. This is one of the properties we’ve had our eye on.”
In the mode of hurry up and wait and then hurry up, Jones said the deal took years to work out and then needed a quick turnaround. “I spent a few years working through several deal configurations with the seller, Gerry Spehar, before we went under contract in July. Gerry worked with extended family members including siblings, their children and a cousin, to pull it together,” he said. “Fundraising for the acquisition needed to happen quickly since we had a very limited time to close on the purchase once we went under contact. We would have preferred a longer timeline to fundraise, but the seller wasn’t able to keep the property off the market for more than one summer season. We really had one shot to get this done in a very short amount of time.”
That is when the CBLT went into intense focus mode. The town of Crested Butte was the largest single contributor with a grant of $1,000,000 from its Open Space Fund. Gunnison County contributed $350,000 from the Gunnison Valley Land Preservation Fund. Local non-profit 1% for Open Space contributed $75,000 while the Gates Family Foundation contributed $40,000.
On the private fundraising side, Jones said “the CBLT met with a lot of people that understood the opportunity to protect such an important landscape. Gifts ranged from very large to very small and more than 250 people donated. Every dollar was needed to get it done.”
Those 90 acres are an important puzzle piece for that area. It is adjacent to CBLT fee-owned lands and private conservation easements throughout the Slate River Valley from Riverbend to Pittsburg. The conservation area in the immediate vicinity is a few thousand acres. Jones said these are some of the most heavily used areas for year-round recreation and cattle grazing.
“Our families have owned that property for almost 100 years and it has been used primarily for cattle ranching,” said Gerry Spehar, spokesperson for the family. “Both sides of our family, the Spehars and the Kapushions have been in the valley since the 1880s. We feel great about this outcome. It is as meaningful as it gets. We are extremely pleased that it will be preserved. Jake was great to work with and we know the Land Trust will be great stewards of this land.”
Jones said the property and the nearby conserved parcels will offer multiple benefits. “Remarkably, these conserved lands also support a tremendous amount of wildlife due to the high functioning wetlands throughout,” he said. “The land will continue to support cattle grazing during the late summer and will be critical wildlife habitat the rest of the year. We are working on the terms of the eventual conservation easement across from the new 90 acres and the existing Confluence Parcel. We will continue to allow fishing access to the Slate River immediately upstream of the Gothic Road bridge, and the property can support Nordic skiing in the future. Most importantly, we wanted to ensure that the remaining undeveloped Slate River floodplain remains as natural as possible. We want to keep the wetlands wet. The importance of wetlands at the headwaters of the Gunnison River will be ever apparent this summer if it remains dry throughout the Rockies.”
Jones said closing on the new 90-acre parcel is a major punctuation mark on a very productive year for CBLT. “We started the summer with four parcels under contract and closed on three before the end of 2025. This one is the fourth,” he explained. “Starting with the acquisition of a 17-acre piece of the hillside next to the Cement Creek Caves trail, we then purchased 14 acres near Long Lake, conserved the 120-acre Cement Creek Ranch with the Baxter family and now the new 90 acres in the Slate River wetlands. All that happened between the first of October 2025 and the tenth of February 2026.”
The Crested Butte Land Trust has helped protect around 7,000 acres from Gunnison to Marble and everywhere in-between. These protections are a split between private land conservation easements and CBLT-owned lands. There is also a split between privately-owned ranches like the Baxter’s Cement Creek Ranch and public access parcels such as the Lower Loop, Long Lake, Lupine Trail and Mt. Emmons.
Spehar said his grandfather and his brother bought that property in the 1930s. The family still comes back regularly and holds an annual summer barbeque in the valley. “One other thank you goes to Gunnison County which was very helpful and accommodating in helping to get the deal done,” he noted. “Overall, we love Crested Butte and feel this is a wonderful outcome.”
“The fact that we pulled this one off is a small miracle,” concluded Jones.
