Survivors of polygamist sect fence off 1,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in southwestern Colorado
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A conflict brewing in southwestern Colorado pits ranchers and outdoors enthusiasts against survivors of former polygamist leader Warren Jeffs after the latter group declared itself the Free Land Holders Committee and began fencing off about 1,000 acres of public U.S. Forest Service land.
Angry residents were planning to gather at 1 p.m. Thursday on land outside the town of Mancos in the San Juan National Forest to begin tearing down the fences with heavy equipment, even as Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin implores people to stand down to allow the dispute to be negotiated between federal agencies and the Free Land Holders.
The Free Land Holders Committee began building the fences on Saturday, alarming ranchers who use the federal land for cattle grazing and those who ride mountain bikes, hike and cross-country ski in area known locally as Chicken Creek. They fear the group will cut off access to public lands.
“They couldn’t have picked a piece of ground that was more beloved by the town than that area,” said Brad Finch, a retired teacher and firefighter who lives outside Mancos and uses the national forest almost daily to hike, bike or ski.
But the sheriff insists access has not been cut off, even though barbed-wire fencing now crisscrosses forest service property.
“There’s no public access being denied,” Nowlin said. “I’m just trying to head off all these people that have got themselves all wound up with false information.”
Nowlin spent hours Wednesday trying to negotiate a settlement between the U.S. Forest Service and the land holders group, and issued a news release late in the day imploring residents to “refrain from gathering in the area and/or attempting to remove fencing.” The Forest Service and sheriff’s office also met Wednesday night with local leaders.
But on Thursday morning, members of a local Facebook group posted that they are still planning to tear down fences, and The Denver Post spoke with two people who said the planned tear-down was still happening.
“Safety protocols will be discussed on (site),” a member of the Facebook group wrote. “Our goal is to remove wire and T posts. We want to do this safely and be respectful to the land that has already been damaged.”
Nowlin said the people building the fences are not members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS. However, many of them were born into the sect led by Jeffs and escaped once the leader was imprisoned in Texas for rape in his role in the arranged marriage of teenage cousins. He said they claim to be Free Land Holders and have rights to the Forest Service property under the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave U.S. citizens rights to land in exchange for living and working on it.
Content retrieved from: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/10/10/flds-land-colorado-warren-jeffs-free-land-holders-san-juan-national-forest-mancos/.
