LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor: Ouray County is currently revising its land use master plan for the first time in 22 years with a target completion date next year. If you are not following this effort, you should be. To check the schedule, review progress to date, and contribute your thoughts, go to the county website under land use planning. Do not assume things will remain the same around here for another 22 years.
On a recent trip up to Miller Mesa on County Road 5, I was shocked and saddened to notice that two large 210-acre tracts of ranchland near the forest have been subdivided. The southernmost tract now has six parcels at $1.7 million each and three are already under contract. Access roads are being constructed and one is actually parallel to CR5 — just a few feet apart! Pathetic. The public will still be driving on a crappy road, if they can, looking right at a brand new road for the millionaires. Here was an opportunity for some cost sharing whereby the public and the developer would both benefit.
Apparently there is no interest, even if it saves money.
The second tract will suffer a similar fate. Access roads are not in place yet so you can buy the whole thing for $6.2 million, making it currently the most expensive land currently for sale in the county. Much of the parcel is visible from CR5 and thousands of people have stopped along the way to photograph the outstanding views of Mt. Sneffels; it is no exaggeration to say this is national park quality landscape comparable to the Grand Tetons. Unless some big bucks can be found fast, we now will see roads and driveways to another six fortress enclaves for Telluride and Aspen refugees, disfi guring in perpetuity a truly majestic corner of our county. Oprah, are you listening? Nature Conservancy? Bueller?
I was surprised to learn that there is no requirement to inform the county or the public when subdividing land; all that is necessary is to quietly file a new plat and start the chainsaws as long as it’s 35-acre parcels. As other large landowners “age out” and ranching becomes more difficult, this situation is likely to occur over and over.
Something fair and creative must be developed to protect our most valuable lands from being destroyed or Ouray will go the way of Jackson (Wyo.), Steamboat Springs, and the list goes on.
Ed Bovy
Log Hill Mesa
