A Texas Oil Heir vs. the Hundreds of Locals Who Have Keys to His Colorado Mountain Estate

SAN LUIS, Colo.—A land fight that traces back to America’s frontier West has been reignited in this remote stretch of Colorado-New Mexico borderland.

On one side: residents of one of the state’s poorest and most heavily Hispanic communities, who have long climbed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to gather firewood and let their cattle and sheep graze. On the other side: a Texas oil and ranching heir who purchased some 80,000 acres in 2017 and is trying to build an 8-foot-high fence around part of the estate.

The dispute, which is tied up in court proceedings, is an example of the tug of war between private-property rights and access to natural resources in rural America, but lawyers describe the Colorado case as one of a kind. The landowner, William Harrison, might have bought the mountains, but hundreds of locals have court-sanctioned access to use it—and the keys to enter through gates.

“There’s 700 of them and one of me,” Harrison, 37, said, estimating the current number of locals with access.

Local officials have sued to stop Harrison’s estate from completing the fence. Harrison’s estate, in turn, has sued several locals—including a rancher named Eli Rael, who said he was retrieving cattle that had wandered—for allegedly trespassing on neighboring property Harrison owns. Other residents have accused Harrison’s employees of intimidating them when they are collecting firewood or timber on his property and have chafed at the use of surveillance cameras and drones.

The land at issue was part of an 1840s Mexican land grant meant to motivate people to settle along the frontier in present-day Colorado. Mexico ceded the region to the U.S. a few years later, and the property was eventually sold to William Gilpin, Colorado’s first territorial governor. But the sales agreement had a crucial clause, according to court documents: The new homesteaders had been lured by a promise that they would have access to the mountains and their resources—and that promise would have to be kept.

The arrangement is similar to an easement in a deed, said Jerome DeHerrera, a lawyer who has been involved in litigation over the property for about 20 years.

“If you sell a piece of land that is burdened with an easement, subsequent owners have to follow that,” DeHerrera said.

But Jamie Cotter, a lawyer for Harrison’s estate, said the rights go far beyond a common easement and are less clearly defined: Where can cattle graze? What kind of trees can be cut down?

“I absolutely feel like William is villainized,” Cotter said, describing Harrison as a conservationist who cares about preserving the property.

Harrison knew the legal history of the property but said he quickly came to believe that some access holders were misusing their rights—for example, by collecting years’ worth of wood and selling it, overgrazing, or joy riding on ATVs.

“There’s people that are using it illegally, and I’m not OK with that,” he said.

In May, a special master is expected to consider whether Harrison’s estate can block locals from coming close to certain buildings on the property; whether it can close gates that families historically used to enter the ranch; and whether locals have a right to repair roads on the mountains they use to collect firewood and timber.

Another judge has issued an injunction to stop Harrison’s estate from building the 8-foot-high fence; after the estate began construction, Costilla County officials issued a building moratorium so they could draft regulations and sued when construction continued. The case is expected to be heard this fall.

Some residents have said animals can’t climb over or crawl beneath the fence—which is topped with barbed wire—leaving them trapped on the estate and away from creeks and other sources of water. Others have said that the fence construction has caused flash flooding and erosion as wide tracts of steep mountain terrain have been bulldozed, leaving the area stripped of vegetation that typically helps disperse rainwater.

Frank Vigil, a resident who lives in a century-old adobe house built by his uncle, said he doesn’t think most people would be bothered if Harrison’s estate had erected a type of short fence that other landowners have.

“We’re out in the West, we know what fences are,” said Vigil, 72. “Not that thing over there that he’s building. That’s a prison.”

Harrison, who is chief executive of an investment holding company, said some parts of the fence have been lowered to allow deer and elk to jump over. The fence is necessary to keep out trespassers, such as poachers, and to corral his 60 or so bison, he said.

He offered to give locals $20 million and 10,000 acres in the northwestern portion of the estate in exchange for giving up their access rights. They turned down the offer.

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are an economic lifeline for some residents of San Luis and its neighboring villages. Locals cut down trees to build corrals and fences. The snowmelt provides irrigation water. Many residents still heat their homes with firewood.

The mountains also allow locals to save money feeding cattle—offering land where livestock can graze part of the year while families grow hay and other crops on their own parcels.

In the 1960s, a private landowner blocked locals’ access to the mountains, kicking off a yearslong range war. Colorado’s Supreme Court restored most of their access in 2002, saying the homesteaders’ successors had a right to traverse the mountains to graze animals, gather wood, and harvest timber for their own use. Hundreds of people were identified and given keys to enter the estate.

But the decades without access were a blow to the region’s subsistence farmers, said Joseph Quintana, 69, who said his father made good money as a cattle rancher when he was growing up in the area. Quintana left home in 1972 to attend college and later became a certified public accountant and a military doctor.

“Farmers had to drastically reduce the size of their herds,” he said, leaving some unable to make a living.

The population of Costilla County, which includes San Luis, widely considered the oldest town in Colorado, declined 13% between 1960 and 2000. Neighboring Conejos County saw a less than 1% population decline during that time while three nearby counties in the San Luis Valley grew.

The ranch has been sold several times since the Supreme Court case began. Residents have frequently tangled with its owners.

Several testified in court that Harrison’s ranch employees carried firearms, wore body cameras and tried to limit locals’ activities, including by prohibiting one person from grazing sheep, and confronting others who were scouting places to collect firewood. A district judge in that case said there was an obvious power imbalance, with residents sometimes being treated like second-class citizens.

Rael, the man sued for trespassing, said Harrison’s estate closed a gate across the road from his property that he previously used to move his cattle onto the mountains. Most key holders are now funneled to one of nine or so gates.

“We’ve been always open-range,” said Rael, 62, glancing at where his cattle used to meander back and forth between his pasture and the sagebrush and grass of the mountains. “That’s the way my grandpa used to do it.”

Write to Shannon Najmabadi at [email protected]