RAISING FUNDS FOR THE NEXT PHASE OF THE FIGHT

We Just Won Access Back at Clarkston Mountain

Here's What this Case is Really About

A private landowner purchased Winter Canyon Ranch in 2023 and promptly set about closing routes that Cache Valley families had used for well over a century. When the public pushed back, his legal team landed on a strategy: argue that the routes are trails, not roads — and that Utah's public dedication statute, which protects roads that have been used by the public for ten continuous years, simply doesn't apply to trails at all.

If that argument wins, the consequences reach far beyond Clarkston Mountain.

Utah law has long recognized that paths through narrow mountain canyons — county ways, common roads, routes used by generations of riders, hikers, hunters, and ranchers — can be protected as public highways when the public has used them openly and without permission for a decade. A 1919 Utah Supreme Court ruling specifically upheld that interpretation, noting that the law was meant to cover roads "oftentimes through narrow canyons, over mountain passes."

WCR's position would erase that protection for any route that doesn't look like a paved road. Every dirt track, every canyon path, every OHV route crossing private land in Utah would be vulnerable. A landowner could acquire property, post a gate, and argue that the public never had rights to begin with — because it was "just a trail."

We filed a Motion for Partial Summary Judgment to settle the question now, as a matter of law. Our argument: the canyon roads at Clarkston are county ways and common roads under Utah statute — not trails. They are not designated trails under any administrative process. No agency has managed or marked them as such. And the Legislature never intended its 1963 removal of the word "trails" from the highway definition to strip courts of authority over the narrow mountain roads that have always been the arteries of public land access in this state.

We Can't Let 100 Years of Legal Precedent that Protect Our Trails be Overturned!

Defending Our Ground

This is What Your Support Makes Possible

BRC is a named party in this case. We're in it because we know that access won in the courtroom lasts. It's not subject to the next administration, the next agency director, or the next land sale. A court order recognizing these routes as public highways is durable in a way that no negotiated agreement can be.

But getting there requires resources — attorneys, filings, depositions, hearings, and the long grind of making an airtight legal record.

If the work we're doing at Clarkston Mountain matters to you — if you believe that the routes your family has ridden for generations deserve the full protection of the law — please consider making a contribution today by entering to win a custom SXS, a trailer, and $10,000 cash!