Summit County is trying to figure out what to do with the 910 Cattle Ranch property. And the Ure Ranch property. Armed with $50 million open space bond voters approved in 2021, county government has been on a buying spree. 

The combined purchase price of the two properties is about double the bond amount. Summit Land Conservancy, an organization that fights well above its weight class, scored a $22 million grant for water quality that helps fill the gaps, but not entirely. 

But now that we own, or rather, have expensive options on these two iconic properties, what do we do with them? The county is proposing $200,000 to come up with a management plan on the 910 Ranch.  Nobody ever said open space management was free or easy.

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Through the years, the open space bonding has done a great deal to preserve the character of the area. We are clearly inclined towards paving the last inch around here, and purchasing some key properties for preservation, recreation and just plain serenity, was money well spent. 

The Ure Ranch is essential to protecting the Kamas meadow and water quality on the Weber River system all the way to the Great Salt Lake. 

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The 910 Ranch has basically been untouched, making it a rare, intact ecosystem of about 13 square miles.  It is generally too steep for development, but could easily have been hacked up by roads to access a few billionaire hermits’ fifth vacation mansions. It’s too good for that. 

Bonanza Flat was more at risk of development, and Park City’s purchase there protected a lot of it.

If there’s a common thread in these purchases, it’s that the agency buying the land didn’t fully know what they were going to do with it. 

If Summit County bought a good winter range out on the west desert, the combination would be among the best cattle operations in the state. The high summer range of the 910, the spring range and the ability to raise some hay on the Ure Ranch — all you need is a winter range and Kevin Costner to run it, and it’s a great operation. 

Summit County struggles to pick up the garbage. I’m not sure they should go into the cattle business.

Park City has learned the hard way that open space requires a lot of management. Bonanza Flat has become a free-for-all in large part because there are a million people in Salt Lake who see it as an extension of the national forest property in the Cottonwood Canyons. 

The city seems flummoxed by the heavy use. It’s functioning as a national park but was envisioned as a conservation preserve. It’s not working. Scraping off the Church of Dirt seemed like the ultimate admission of defeat. Instead of figuring out how to manage that (charge a modest fee, require users to post a clean-up bond, figure out parking or shuttles), the city threw in the towel and scraped it off.  Another piece of small town quirkiness lost to growth.

The properties acquired by the county are quite different. 

The Ure Ranch is something that will take active agricultural use. They can’t just let the grass grow, piling up acres of waist-high dry grass on the edge of Kamas. We saw how that works in Boulder, Colorado, a couple of years ago, where their vast stretches of natural open space did exactly what vast stretches of open space do — it burned whole towns to the ground. 

The 910 property, despite looking like some great mountain biking, could be managed more or less as wilderness, with limited access. That will take serious enforcement. Wilderness for its own sake is a noble idea, but the elk that summer there have limited options for the winter now that their habitat is paved suburban bliss. Hence, the $200,000 study.

Open space isn’t passive. I know that from personal experience owning a ranch. We lease the cattle operation to others, but it is still a very busy summer maintaining things and repairing the depredations of trail users who can’t turn their trailers around without knocking over fences. 

I think the costs of management have taken the city by surprise, and the complexity of management of the Ure and 910 properties — even when they figure out what the management objective is — will certainly take the county by surprise, too. Will the county HR department be advertising for cowboys, sheep herders, wildlife biologists and H2-A temporary foreign agricultural workers? Should they?

There are still a few active ranching operations in the county that might be willing to lease some or all of the properties. Some of the Ure property isn’t critical conservation land, and could be sold (or traded to the school district for their wetland parcel in the Kamas meadow). There are options. They all need a plan behind them.

Are these are the right entities to manage these properties in the first place? 

Would Bonanza Flat be better off run by State Parks? They have the expertise. Why are Park City taxpayers shouldering the cost of a recreation amenity used by a huge number of non-residents (like me)?   

Ure Ranch probably needs to be leased to a capable rancher.  

910 remains a puzzle, but is too precious to screw up. 

These are high-class problems to have, but we need to sort them out.

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.