The owners of the 731-acre Aspen Valley Ranch in Woody Creek listed for sale for $88 million have a problem with a ghost road.
No, the road isn’t haunted. But it is depicted on an 1888 map, and Pitkin County thinks that under federal law, it might technically still be a public road.
In an effort to make the ghost road go away, the owners of the luxury ranch are now proposing significant improvements to an existing, but problematic, public hiking easement through the ranch. They’re offering a new hiking trail in exchange for the potentially public road through the luxury ranch to vanish.
The specter of the old road filled the Pitkin County commissioners’ meeting room on June 23.
“I still think the chances of finding this is a public road are good,” Pitkin County Attorney John Ely told the commissioners that day.
As a condition of a land-use approval granted at that meeting, the commissioners required that Aspen Valley Ranch depict a 60-foot-wide road on the plat, or detailed map, of the property — just in case Ely could someday prove that the road shown on the 1888 map is still a public road.
“I can’t possibly give up additional public access,” Commissioner Michael Owsley told David Myler, the attorney for Aspen Valley Ranch.
“I think putting that road on a plat is going to kill our ability to sell lots,” Myler responded.
Owner ResortVentures is offering Aspen Valley Ranch for sale for $88 million while also preparing to sell 14 homesites on the property.
A 120-year-old map created after an 1887 survey shows a road running from Upper River Road across the center of Aspen Valley Ranch and up into Dry Woody Creek. But there are no physical signs on the land of an old road in that alignment. And the other existing roads on the ranch are in different locations than the road shown on the 1888 map.
Ely, at the direction of the commissioners, is still researching whether the road existed before the federal land in the area was given to homesteaders Frank Frasson and Benedick Bourg, who were successfully farming on the land by 1883.
If so, and the road was never vacated, then it is possible the county could still claim it as a public road. The onus is on the county to prove that the road once existed on federal land, and it must do so in a federal court.
Myler, who has also been researching the road, has gathered evidence suggesting that it appears on maps only after the first homesteaders arrived on the land that is now Aspen Valley Ranch. If that is the case, then the road shown on the 1888 map was on private, not federal, land and is therefore a private road.
“If you like history, this is fun stuff,” Myler said in June.
But it is not fun stuff if you are trying to sell high-end residential property in Woody Creek. Most sophisticated buyers probably would not consider the prospect of a public road’s suddenly appearing on their property a benefit.
The June 23 approval allows Aspen Valley Ranch owners to landscape the entry road to the ranch, build a new employee housing unit for the ranch manager, bulldoze a new road to four lots on an upper bench, realign a portion of Dry Woody Creek and make other improvements.
But the 60-foot right-of-way of the ghost road runs through the location of a planned barn and ranch manager’s house, which the owners had hoped to build this year.
So, on July 22, just before the 30-day deadline expired, Aspen Valley Ranch served the county commissioners with formal notice that it is appealing the condition that required the ghost road to be shown on the plat. The appeal is based on a state law requiring that conditions be imposed “in a rational and consistent manner.”
The appeal claims that there has “been no credible evidence submitted in the record through the June 23rd hearing which supports the existence of a public road or a public right of access through Aspen Valley Ranch.”
On Wednesday, Ely said he is still conducting research into the matter. He was also aware of the Aspen Valley Ranch appeal and mentioned that the issue could go to litigation.
Myler wants to avoid a lawsuit, but said he needs to preserve the rights of Aspen Valley Ranch to appeal the condition within the 30-day deadline. “Litigation is the last resort, and we are pursuing a resolution that will benefit the public, the county and the landowner,” Myler said Thursday, referring to the offer of the public hiking trail improvements.
While the existence of a public road through the ranch is in question, no one disputes the existence of a public trail easement on the ranch, although hikers have been turned back by ranch managers when trying to use the trail. The trail easement bars use of the trail when there is ongoing construction work on the ranch, as there has been for much of this summer.
The trail easement runs along the side of the existing roadway leading to the center of Aspen Valley Ranch and into Red Canyon, which winds up towards the high ridge that sits between the Roaring Fork and Fryingpan rivers.
“We’re looking at some alignments that would avoid having people having to hike down the road,” Myler said. “If we can find a way to snake it around the edge of the ranch somehow, it is to everybody’s benefit. And the alignment that I hiked the other day was just spectacular.”
Myler did not want to go into more detail about the alignment of the proposed new trail yet, but he did say it connects nicely to adjacent federal land.
Pitkin County, in turn, now has 30 days to address the appeal filed by Aspen Valley Ranch.
In the meantime, the ghost road sits on the 1888 map, and perhaps will be conjured into a reality.
bgs@aspendailynews.com