Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

By Gary Harmon, The Daily Sentinel

PAONIA — Billionaire William Koch has added 811 acres of rugged territory overlooked by Ragged Mountain and legal access to popular, rogue, mountain-bike routes near here to a package he hopes to swap for lands that will consolidate his western Colorado ranch.

Koch two years ago floated a swap, one that would consolidate the upper and lower sections of his ranch tucked into the rocky, sagebrush slopes east of Paonia Reservoir with about three square miles of federal land that separates the ranch sections.

To win support for the swap, Koch dangled some lands that federal officials had considered to be out of reach, one of them a piece of property that offers a view of the Dillon Pinnacles over Blue Mesa Reservoir. The National Park Service has listed the land as a potential location for a visitor center for the Curecanti National Recreation Area.

Koch also offered to throw in some land at Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah, including the home of the discoverer of the fossils on display there.

The swap, which includes two states and three federal agencies, can’t go forward without an act of Congress.

Read more about the proposed land swap and what it would mean to hikers, bikers and off-road riders.

PHOTO:  Tom Glass leads an all-terrain vehicle tour of the Buck Creek Ranch in the shadow of Ragged Mountain. William Koch wants to offer the ranch, and hiking and motorized vehicle routes to the Ragged Mountain Wilderness, to complete a land swap that would consolidate Koch’s Bear Ranch.   Christopher Tomlinson