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private sector, in most cases, is a better
steward of nature than the government.
He argues that public land access
obeys a dynamic prevalent in vehicular
traffic planning. When highway depart-
ments construct additional lanes to a
highway to ease congestion, he says, it
generally has the opposite effect, merely
allowing more drivers to clog the road. In
a similar way, encouraging the use of mul-
tiple pathways into public lands degrades
the environment. Better, he maintains,
would be to let private stakeholders
control access and charge fees instead
of burdening taxpayers with the job;
fewer people would trample the trails,
and those trails would be better kept.
At the right place and the right time,
the notion that the Crazies are being
overrun by hordes of weekenders
desperate for recreation is easy to
conjure. It’s best done on a sun-shot
Saturday morning in summer, close to
Half Moon Campground, which is near
the lone uncontested public entry point
on the east side of the Crazies. Here,
campers and hikers gather before dis-
persing into the relative solitude of
the vast mountain wilderness. On one
such morning in August, no fewer than
33 vehicles overfilled a parking area near
the trailhead. “It’s like a Walmart parking
lot,” grumbled Dario Quilici, a 35-year-old
who was hiking in with Gino Mussolini,
his German wirehaired pointer, for some
camping and fishing.
Quilici’s plan was seat-of-the-pants.
He thought he might spend three or
four days hiking to an exit point on the
far side of the mountains, but he didn’t
realize that the most direct trail was
blocked by the gate Wilson had con-
fronted. Other possible paths were also
contested. When I told him this, he
redirected his criticism away from the
parking lot and toward the landowners.
“I bet they have some lobbying power,”
he said. “They just want to keep every-
thing like it’s their own private reserve.”
Herein lies the big challenge for the
landowners and their defenders: Survey
after survey has shown that the public
hates the idea that someone can lock
taxpayers out of public land, and that
they’re suspicious of transferring control
of such tracts to private enterprise.
Nevertheless, Anderson and PERC
deny that their position is out of step
with public opinion, even casting it as
pro-access. Their rationale is oblique: If
the Forest Service insists the public has
a right to use the trails, they say, private
landowners will naturally rebel; numer-
ous court battles will ensue, tying up the
trails in years of litigation and costing
the government millions of dollars. And
as the cases proceed, the landowners
will take steps to secure their property
rights, blocking traffic on the trails until
the mess is sorted out.
“In the places where now there
are signs,” Anderson predicts, “you’ll
see a locked gate.” His comment is an
informed one. He counts several of
the landowners involved in the Crazy
Mountain disputes as friends, including
the owners of the Rein Anchor Outfitting
and Ranch, who operate a hunting lodge
The town of
Wilsall, at
the foot of the
Crazies
