Bair Ranch finally acquired with help from Gore Range Group

by Steve Lipsher

EAGLE—A historic sheep ranch at the mouth of Glenwood Canyon will be preserved as open space after the Eagle County commissioners voted June 2 to tap a new tax to cap a $5.2 million public-private conservation project.

Photo:  View of Bair Ranch.
Courtesy Eagle Valley Land Trust

The 2­1 vote to spend $2 million on the Bair Ranch marked a major victory for conservation organizations—including the Colorado Mountain Club—that lobbied the commissioners to name the ranch as the first project funded under the county's open-space tax.

“Preservation of the property had been important to me for some time, but after a hike in Glenwood Canyon in early May, it became an imperative. I felt I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do all in my power to help save Bair Ranch from development. I am thrilled that we prevailed,” said Anne Esson, Gore Range Group member.

The open-space funding completes an effort by the Bureau of Land Management, Great Outdoors Colorado, the Eagle Valley Land Trust and the Conservation Fund—as well as dozens of individual donors—to protect the land from development pressures.

"I'm relieved," said Craig Bair, who owns the 4,300-acre ranch along with his brother, LeGrande. "We came here prepared to go either way. I thought it would be an easier decision than that."

Residents of Eagle County, who narrowly approved the 1.5 mill open-space tax in 2002, had been evenly divided over the project, with critics contending it would be tantamount to paying Bair to continue doing what he's been doing all along.

But Commissioner Arn Menconi, an ardent backer of the project, noted that more than a thousand people had signed petitions or written to voice their support.

"We've never seen this support for any kind of project. This is obviously a stand for the future of Eagle County," Menconi said.

Commission chairman Tom Stone voted against the proposal, which had been approved by the same split vote last year and then later withdrawn when shortfalls in private funding threatened to scuttle the deal. 

 "I don't think we're getting value for our dollars," said Stone, who found himself in the middle of a public firestorm for not recusing himself after once approaching Bair in his job as a real-estate agent seeking to sell the land. "I want to be very careful so that people believe we're using their money very wisely."

The matter ultimately lay in the hands of swing vote Michael Gallagher, who earlier announced that he would not run for re-election because of continuing health problems that already forced the final vote to be postponed for a month.

"This is future-looking," Gallagher said. "We are looking at what is the effect of doing it or not doing it in the next 20, 40, 50 years and beyond ... The people of Eagle County will not have to think: 'Dang, I wish we could slow down our growth.'"

Last year, facing a deadline imposed by LeGrande Bair, the commissioners agreed to pay for the project out of the county's general fund because the open-space tax hadn't generated any money yet, but they rescinded that decision when the private funding fell through.

Tom Macy, western director of the Conservation Fund, had to make an emergency trip out to Utah to convince LeGrande Bair to stay with the proposal, which now will net him $2.3 million from the outright sale of his portion of the ranch to his brother. 

"The first meeting or two didn't go too well," Macy said. "It was one of those 'not over my dead body' things. But the importance of keeping the ranch intact and its history and the importance of sheep ranching is what brought the brothers together. Basically, they decided that was more important than anything else. It came down to the power of the landscape."

The conservation effort, spurred by $1.5 million from the BLM for the purchase of three hundred acres of land along the Colorado River and another $1 million from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) for conservation easements, was the first proposal to come before the county's open-space advisory commission.

That group, charged with making recommendations for spending $3.5 million collected annually from the tax, approved the project overwhelmingly as the prototype for land conservation, protecting wildlife habitat, the county's ranching heritage, spectacular view corridors, and undeveloped open space.

Cindy Cohagen, executive director of the Eagle Valley Land Trust, said the bulk of the land will remain in private hands as a working ranch and will not have public access. She noted, however, that the value as open space under those conditions far exceeds the cost of potential development. 

"There never will be public access on the Bair Ranch," she said. "If it isn't a working sheep ranch, I fully expect it will be another gated community with a golf course, and then there certainly will be no public access."

Steve Lipscher is the Denver Post's Mountain Bureau reporter.

For more information on the CMC's conservation efforts, visit the CMC Conservation web site.