A collection of forest roads associated with a pseudo-subdivision southeast of Cascade will now be part of Valley County’s road network.
The Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously on Oct. 15 to accept deeds transferring ownership of the roadways from Texas-based DF Development to the county.
The roadways, all of which are existing, have been open to the public for years, but under prescriptive easements that county officials fear could one day be challenged and result in costly court battles.
“The county will (now) always own them and no one can ever put a gate up,” Planning and Zoning Director Cynda Herrick told the commissioners.
DF has been known for gating roads into the company’s land holdings since it bought 172,000 acres of private land in west-central Idaho in 2017. The acquisition made the Wilks Brothers the largest private landowner in both Valley and Adams counties, with nearly 120,000 acres between the two counties — or about 188 square miles.
Much of the land bought by DF was formerly owned by logging companies that allowed public access despite the land being private. Gates installed by DF on some of its other lands were a “wake up call” for the county, said Sherry Maupin, who chairs the commission.
“This is to protect our access for the future,” Maupin said. “That’s really imperative to me, that we support and create access points into our natural forest on an ongoing basis.”
The roads deeded to the county include about seven miles of Clear Creek Road, which intersects Idaho 55 south of Cascade, and about five miles of Horsethief Road.
It also includes a dozen roads associated with Legacy Creek Ranch, a collection of 73 parcels that DF Development is marketing as a subdivision, as Valley Lookout reported. Names for the roadways were approved by the county to improve emergency response to the area.
County won’t maintain roads
No county money is expected to be spent maintaining the roadways, according to the county commissioners, who set road maintenance service levels for nearly 800 miles of county roadway.
“If they want access to their house, then a homeowners association is going to have to be formed, or some kind of an association to do that with a road maintenance agreement because the county is not,” said Sherry Maupin, who chairs the board.
“We don’t have the money to do that,” fellow commissioner Neal Thompson agreed. ‘
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Josh Leonard, a Boise attorney representing DF, told commissioners that road maintenance will likely fall on homeowners, who would need the county to approve permits for maintenance work.
Besides preserving public access, the road conveyance also improves wildfire safety by ensuring existing homes around Clear Creek and near Horsethief Reservoir have a secondary access.
Snowmobile route at risk?
Six people spoke in opposition to the county accepting the road conveyance at a public hearing earlier this month. Most comments focused on the county’s lack of funding for road maintenance and the potential loss of about seven miles of a groomed snowmobile route on Clear Creek Road, also known as Forest Road 409.
County code currently designates Clear Creek Road as a winter snowmobile route, but that could change if the road is plowed under future maintenance agreements with landowners.
Valley County Recreation Director Dave Bingaman said he is working with DF on an alternate snowmobile route, which Leonard confirmed the company is committed to providing.
Maupin said it would be a “benefit to all” to add a snowmobile parking lot along the road where property owner snow removal ends, a suggestion echoed by public comments.
“Anywhere that we don’t have a parking lot, people are parking anywhere, and they will park everywhere,” she said.
Any road maintenance by landowners remains at the discretion of the county, which would issue permits for the work as desired. The road are being upgraded by DF to meet fire standards as part of the conveyance to the county.
“This is accepting deeds and naming roads,” Herrick said. “There is fallout for that, but those things have to come in their due time.”
So far, the county has received one building permit application for a parcel within Legacy Creek Ranch. The application is for a small off-grid cabin on a 640-acre parcel, Herrick said, noting that development opportunities are currently limited by a lack of utilities in the area.
The Wilks brothers, who are estimated to be worth nearly $4 billion per Forbes, earned $3.5 billion from the 2011 sale of Frac Tech, a fracking company they founded in 2002.
