A 'holy grail' of conservation: Colorado land manager celebrates Snowmass Falls Ranch deal

In 1977, teenager Dale Will started on a trail bound for Snowmass Lake in Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, blissfully unaware that his path spanned private property through a historic easement.

This was a property of big meadows, aspen groves, waterfalls and trout-teeming streams under the gaze of the Elk Range. It was a picture of paradise that would be seared into Will's memory.

"I had always thought of it as sacred land," he said.

Until he indeed came to know it as private property.

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In 1999, Will became the point person for land acquisition under Pitkin County's Open Space and Trails program, funded by property taxes. As he spent the next decades working deals to secure parkland, that picture of paradise always lingered: 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch, that glacier-cut gateway to wilderness that had so far avoided the development of adjacent Snowmass Village.

"That one was always the holy grail," Will siad. "I can't believe we are where we're at with it now."

The start of this year saw the Open Space and Trails Board and Pitkin County commissioners unanimously approve a record-setting purchase. Snowmass Falls Ranch's $34 million price tag was double the program's last-biggest purchase in 2010.

A partner on the project, Wilderness Land Trust, proclaimed it a "landmark conservation deal." It was a deal that Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) wanted to put its name behind.

The agency granting lottery revenues to recreation and conservation initiatives recently announced a $10 million loan to the effort. That was the largest single sum announced within the total $117 million round of funding, the largest round in GOCO's 32-year history.

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The loan "replenishes our coffers in the near-term," Will said — money that can be put on the table for another prospective land purchase while those property tax-built coffers regrow.

"Then I think in a couple of years it'll be relatively painless for us to pay (GOCO) back," Will said, "because we hope the Land and Water Conservation dollars are coming in."

That's where Wilderness Land Trust comes in. Staff this month reported meetings in Washington, D.C., aimed at drumming up support for Land and Water Conservation Fund allocations to fuel the U.S. Forest Service buying Snowmass Falls Ranch from Pitkin County and adding it to the surrounding wilderness area.

The county's goal has been twofold: to permanently protect the 650 acres and recover the financial hit to the Open Space and Trails program. Upon commissioners' unanimous approval to buy Snowmass Falls Ranch, White River National Forest's supervisor provided a letter conditionally supporting the plan.

Land and Water Conservation Fund support would more likely allow for a phased purchase — portions of the 650 acres over time, "as opposed to one big transaction," Will said.

"I suppose the real gnawing question I have in my mind is, How soon can we recover our capacity?" he said. "Because there are some other extraordinary pieces of land that are quite threatened."

But nothing compares to Snowmass Falls Ranch, what Will previously called "easily the most extraordinary piece of private land in Pitkin County."

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Private ownership is traced to Danish immigrant Kate Lindvig, who became known as the “Cattle Queen of Snowmass" after her homesteading in the early 1900s. She later sold to a couple, Bob and Ruth Perry, whose family has maintained the land for 80 years.

Wilderness Land Trust applauded that maintenance in a statement, adding: "The likelihood of another conservation-minded buyer stepping forward when the property was listed for sale was slim, and if not protected it could have been subdivided into up to six lots and developed."

The pursuit by Wilderness Land Trust and Pitkin County was boosted by the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, which restored Land and Water Conservation Fund's $900 million annual balance. That "made us bolder," Will said, and "more hopeful of recovering some of these funds."

While working through a potential transfer to the Forest Service, Snowmass Falls Ranch will keep its "status quo," Will said. People will still embark on the trail easement to Snowmass Lake, just as that teenager did in 1977.

Will said he imagined people today are just like he was back then — unaware.

"They might not even know how threatened it was, or that it's now been saved, and that's fine," he said. "We're just trying to protect a beautiful piece of old Colorado."