The Summit County Council is nearing the third anniversary of its decision to spend $55 million on the acquisition of an 8,500-acre property in Jeremy Ranch, and residents are now discovering how they may be able to access the land in the future through a proposed recreation plan.
County officials have been meeting with stakeholders of the 910 Cattle Ranch for the past few months and brainstorming potential recreational uses on the property and where residents should be allowed to visit. County Lands and Natural Resources Director Jess Kirby described the process as “throwing a net” over the ranch to draw in as many neighboring property owners, homeowners associations and state agencies as possible.
The stakeholder groups worked through multiple issues, such as capacity, parking, wildlife impacts, types of recreation and whether dogs should be allowed on the property. The results of those conversations were then combined with feedback from community members at previous roundtable discussions and in a survey conducted last year.
The information was then synthesized and translated into a master recreation plan, which county officials presented to the public at an open house in the Snyderville Basin on Tuesday.
“I like the fact that they’re trying to be productive in terms of looking at what happened in other outdoor areas and how they can stage parking, certain trail uses, e-bikes and whatnot,” said Barbara Siegel, a resident who attended the open house. “I think by managing, for example, e-bikes, dogs and other human-related impacts, it’ll allow it to hopefully stay as wild as it can be.”
The county intends to manage and open the 910 Cattle Ranch in phases, with the first phase focused on zoning the property into three distinct pieces: the community zone, exploratory area, and conservation core and research area.
Kirby said the community zone, located at the base of the property, will be the most impacted part of the ranch because it’s where residents and visitors will be allowed to recreate. Hiking trails between one and five miles will likely be established in the community zone, and it will be the only zone to allow dogs.
The exploratory area will also have trails, as well as limited opportunities for mountain biking, which will be discussed at a later date when the county reaches the second phase of its recreation plan.
“The third zone that we’re proposing is the conservation core and research area, and the best way I can explain it is to think about it like the Swaner Preserve,” Kirby said. “It’s off limits to the general public, but there is an opportunity for guided hikes or guided research or other approved uses back there. There might still be some trails, but it’ll definitely be limited compared to the other zones.”
Kirby emphasized adaptive management as a core tenant of the county’s approach to the ranch, meaning the plan is flexible and may change if officials discover restrictions need to be tightened.
“We’re going to be monitoring very closely and seeing how those impacts are on the land and on the wildlife,” she said. “If it’s working, we’ll continue, and if it’s not working, we’ll reevaluate and change our plans going forward. … It’s a very iterative, slow process to open up in a phased way so that we can make sure that not only do we have a plan in place, but we have the staff to support it and the funding to support it, so we’re not getting too out over our skis.”
Leslie Miller, the partner of the ranch’s previous property owner, also attended the open house. She said she was worried the county’s plan wasn’t comprehensive enough to protect the area’s wildlife, especially because of its proximity to millions of visitors who travel to the Wasatch Back from the Salt Lake Valley.
“Federal tax dollars purchased a wildlife refuge. They didn’t purchase Round Valley or Run-A-Muk,” Miller said. “They purchased a wildlife refuge, and I think that should be and must be a priority, and how recreational uses interact with that concept and the strategic plan is yet to be determined.”
Miller also expressed concerns about the proximity of hiking trails to the property’s waterways in the community zone, saying she assumed those natural corridors would be sensitive and the most affected by human activity.
But Kirby said the trails are farther from the water than they look on aerial maps — at least hundreds of feet from the shore — and that the trails’ locations were strategically chosen based on how people already interact with the property.
“It’s intentional to keep people where people are now,” Kirby explained. “Right now, the use is at the bottom of the canyon, and that happens to be where the water is as well. The water is still very, very high on our conservation focus. That’s one of the reasons why we’re doing planned access points to the water.”
Kirby said there isn’t a convenient way to keep people out of the water without fencing the entire shoreline, which the county doesn’t want to do so wildlife can continue to pass through the area.
“It’s a delicate balance of putting regulations in place, being able to enforce that with staff and to create spaces that will be sacrificial areas, for lack of a better word,” Kirby said. “It’s a strategy of finding places that can be impacted to preserve the other places from impact, and, again, it’s going to be an adaptive process … so we can reevaluate and pull back.”
The recreation plan isn’t finalized yet, so residents still have time to reach out to the county with feedback. Kirby said the County Council is expected to review the plan, with a potential vote for approval, on May 20. The county will also hold a public hearing the same day for residents to go on the record with their thoughts.
The Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands will also need to authorize the plan before it goes into effect. Kirby said she did not know exactly how long the state’s process will take, but she estimated the 910 Cattle Ranch will be open to the public sometime next summer.
“This is a property for our community as much as it is for the county and everybody else,” Kirby said. “We wanted to make sure that our community is happy with how we’re implementing the bond funds and how we’re programming this, so it feels very positive right now.”
The ranch is currently closed to the public until the county has its recreation plan in place and begins to open the property in phases. More information on the ranch is available by visiting summitcounty.info/910ranch.