Land in the American West: Private Claims and the Common Good

Dividing the Land: The Taylor Ranch and the Case for Preserving the Limited Access Commons

121 Dividing the Land The Taylor Ranch and the Case for Preserving the Limited Access Commons maría e. montoya S ince the late 1960s, the people of the San Luis Valley in southcentral Colorado have experienced intense litigation involving private property rights and the use of a commons. The case Espinoza v. Taylor has pitted the local inhabitants of San Luis, Colorado , against a North Carolina lumberman for control of a seventy-seven thousand-acre tract of the Sangre de Cristo land grant. This vast area, known as the Taylor Ranch, became a source of tension and litigation when the owner, Jack Taylor, refused to allow the local Hispanos the same access to resources that their ancestors had used as a commons under previous owners. The Hispanos responded to what amounted to Taylor’s closing a commons by continuing their traditional uses, which Taylor viewed as poaching and trespassing. At the height of the conflict, each side accused the other of violence and someone even took a few shots at Taylor. Because of the conflict’s intensity, the Colorado state government (through the initiative of then governor Roy Romer) intervened with a rare exhibition of generosity and historical insight by proposing to purchase the land from Taylor and return some of the acreage to the original claimants—the local Hispanos in Costilla County.1 At the heart of the conflict is the status of the land as a commons. The Hispanos argue that since the grant’s inception, this mountain tract—la sierra—has been used as a common area for grazing, timber cutting, and wood gathering, to name but a few uses. Moreover, the seventy-seventhousand -acre tract sits at elevations above eight thousand feet and pro- maría e. montoya 122 vides the watershed for the Culebra River Valley and its tributaries; these streams provide the water that feeds the historic acequias used by the Hispanos to irrigate their lands in the valley below. The locals fear that Taylor’s assertion of his private property rights, as well as the Taylor family’s logging activities, threaten both their use of the land as a commons and the stability of the watershed. More important, Taylor’s disruption of the commons threatens the distinct nature of the San Luis community. Since litigation began, Taylor has died and his heirs, particularly his son Zachary Taylor, would like either to make a profit or to sell the parcel: Taylor the younger has no interest in maintaining the land’s historic use. At one point the state government of Colorado, through the use of lottery funds, proposed purchasing the land for a reasonable market price in order to save it from loggers and others who might overdevelop it. Perhaps more important, the Colorado state government was interested in settling the thirty-year-long legal battle between the Taylor family and the local San Luis residents. The conflict has been a seesaw of activity, with both sides winning court cases but with no final adjudication in place and no signs of a negotiated settlement in the foreseeable future between Taylor, the town of San Luis, and the Colorado state government. For the Hispanos of Costilla County this is not merely a philosophical or legal battle. Rather, the outcome of the case, which will determine who owns and controls the tract, will directly affect the quality of their daily lives. Hispanos of the rural San Luis Valley depend on subsistence farming , and today many live near poverty level because few industries, agricultural or otherwise, exist in the vicinity to provide local wage labor. Since World War II, the valley has endured a large outmigration of its citizens, as many have left to find work in Albuquerque, Denver, Los Alamos, and Pueblo.2 Although many emigrants retain their cultural and familial ties to the area, few economic opportunities remain to sustain them or their families on their traditional homeland. Those who stay in Costilla County and San Luis depend on wood gathering for home fuel consumption (natural gas is not available and butane is expensive), grazing for their small herds, and hunting for sustenance. When Taylor asserted his individual property rights and completely excluded the Hispanos from the land’s historic uses, he also cut off a significant portion of their economy. Residents have reacted by abandoning local informal so- Dividing the Land: The Taylor Ranch and Limited Access Commons 123 lutions and instead of dealing directly with Zachary Taylor, they have gone outside of...