Mysterious group builds barbed-wire fence blocking public land. Now the feds are suing
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing a mysterious religious group after it illegally built a fence around 1,400 acres of public land in Colorado, federal officials say.
The fence illegally blocked public access to the land, which is owned by the U.S. government and managed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado said in a Nov. 26 news release.
The lawsuit “seeks to clarify that such activity is not permitted and to prevent future unlawful fencing of the area,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in the release.
The group, of which some members have ties to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, calls itself the Free Land Holder Committee, and claims a popular recreation area in the San Juan National Forest known as Chicken Creek is theirs, McClatchy News previously reported. The group consists of leaders Patrick Pipkin and Brian Hammon, “and a group of unidentified persons,” officials said.
While the people who built the fence are not members of the church, many of them were born into the polygamist sect led by Warren Jeffs and “escaped once the leader was imprisoned in Texas for rape in his role in the arranged marriage of teenage cousins,” the Denver Post previously reported.
The land dispute came to a head in October when residents in the nearby town of Mancos took matters into their own hands and tore down several miles of the barbed-wire fence, McClatchy reported.
Since then, Pipkin has regularly posted notices around Mancos identifying him as a representative for the group and saying the group has authority over the public’s use of the land, officials said. The notices also set deadlines for residents and the public “to act to protect their rights.”
The complaint says Pipkin, Hammon and their group are trespassing on the federally-owned land, and calls for them to remove all personal property, from fencing to posted signs.
Federal officials hope the lawsuit will result in a court order that will prevent “further obstruction or intimidation of lawful users of this popular area and further harm to the land and the public, and to ensure continuing free and lawful access to public land,” the release said.
“Forest Service and Montezuma County records indicate that ownership of the subject land has been with the United States as part of the National Forest System since 1927,” the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement in October. “These lands support long-standing livestock grazing for local ranchers and the area is popular for recreation including hiking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing.”
The land is also within the Brunot Treaty area, which “assures hunting access for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe,” the agency said.
“Public lands belong to all of us, not to any individual person or group. It is unlawful to construct fences on Forest Service lands without the Forest Service’s permission,” said Matt Kirsch, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado. “We have filed this lawsuit to make clear that these federal lands remain open to the public for all lawfully permitted uses, and to prevent anyone from obstructing that public access.”
Mancos is in the southwest corner of Colorado, about a 360-mile drive from Denver.
