Group associated with polygamous sect builds fences on US Forest Service lands

DENVER (KDVR) — A group in Montezuma County has fenced a parcel of U.S. Forest Service Land in an attempt to claim the land under the Homestead Act of 1862.

According to the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office, the actions have resulted in a property dispute between the Free Land Holders and the U.S. Forest Service in the Chicken Creek area.

The Free Land Holders is a group of people formerly associated with groups within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and with notable figures like now-imprisoned FLDS President Warren Jeffs. FLDS is an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church and encourages members to engage in plural marriage, or polygamy. At one point Jeffs owned 60 acres near Mancos, which was put under court guardianship after his conviction.

Free Land Holders is not directly associated with other FLDS groups that once owned property in the area, according to the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office. However, the agency said the group has “constructed fencing around a parcel of land that they believe belongs to them under the Homestead Act of 1862.”

According to the National Archives, the Homestead Act was designed to accelerate the settlement of western territory by allowing the head of a family 160 acres of surveyed public land in return for a minimal fee and five years of continuous residence on the land. The act was repealed in 1976 by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which governs how the Bureau of Land Management manages public lands.

So far, the group has not restricted the public’s access to roads or trails in the area, and “does not have plans to do so,” according to the sheriff’s office. However, citizens have posted photos on social media showing barbed wire fencing crisscrossing U.S. Forest Service lands.

“The Chicken Creek trail system remains open to the public for hiking, biking, grazing and hunting,” the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office said on Oct. 9. “The group has been cooperating with the Forest Service and Sheriff’s Office to resolve the ongoing dispute.”

A protest was planned for Oct. 10, wherein county residents gathered and removed fencing from the Forest Service lands. The sheriff’s office asked citizens to refrain from attempting to remove the fencing.

So far, the disagreement has remained in the civil sector and is being decided upon by a federal judge. Montezuma County Sheriff Steven Nowlin met with the Free Land Holders and Forest Service officials and shared that both parties have agreed to not develop the disputed property further, including more fencing, until the ownership ruling is handed down.