(Cross-posted, with permission, from The Prairie Blog.)
About ten years ago, Ken and Norma Eberts decided to sell their Bad Lands ranch and retire. The ranch is directly across the river from the Elkhorn Ranch Site, home to our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. It is where he developed his famous conservation ethic, before becoming America’s greatest Conservation President.
Ken and Norma knew the area’s history. The Elkhorn Ranch Site is part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and they wanted to make sure that their own ranch, which sits on the bank of the Little Missouri River, was not bought by a developer and broken up into 40-acre parcels as summer getaways for rich folks with four-wheelers and jet boats. That kind of development would have ruined the solemnity of this quiet, peaceful place.
They offered it to the National Park Service and the North Dakota Park Service, but neither had the wherewithal to make a deal. Then, in 2007, a group of more than 30 national conservation organizations, representing more than 40 million members, headed up by the Boone and Crockett Club, which was founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, pooled their resources, bought the ranch, and donated it to the U.S. Forest Service, which manages more than a million acres in North Dakota’s Little Missouri National Grasslands. The Forest Service named it the Elkhorn Ranchlands, and it became a National Historic District, a fitting partner to the National Park Service site across the river.
The deal was put together in a hurry, because the Eberts had already postponed their retirement by several years waiting for something like this. Resources were finite. As a result of those two things, the Forest Service did not become the owner of what are called “surface minerals” on the property. Surface minerals in North Dakota’s Bad Lands are generally coal, scoria and gravel. The surface mineral ownership was divided over the generations into the hands of more than 40 people. To try to track them all down and do a deal would have taken years (the process is underway now, and still not complete, seven years later). We know the Eberts family owned 50 per cent. Another family, which previously owned the land, owned about 25 per cent. The remainder was divided among many owners, some with less than one per cent interest. No one really believed it would be a problem if the mineral ownership remained that way, instead of being transferred to the Forest Service.
And then this asshole named Roger Lothspeich came along. He had lived in the area at one time, and knew the family that owned a quarter of the mineral rights, and bought them for some undisclosed amount, probably a pittance. He owns a four-wheeler dealership in Montana, and someone jokingly (or maybe not) said he probably traded a couple of four-wheelers for them. And then he announced that he was going to mine the gravel on the land directly across the Little Missouri River from the Elkhorn …read more