A request from the Cielo Vista Ranch to create a 230-acre buffer zone will be heard in front of a special master judge on Feb. 17-20 in Costilla County court.
The La Sierra Environmental Guardians and the Land Rights Council are calling on the public to oppose this buffer zone. They say the granting of which will “prevent us from accessing another 2,000 acres that we will no longer be able to access because we won’t be able to cross the buffer zone.”
According to the Land Rights Council, Cielo Vista Ranch has requested the buffer zone to build a house and other buildings and “to ensure privacy around [William Harrison’s] house.”
The Citizen reached out to a representative of Cielo Vista Ranch for comment, but had not received a reponse at the time of publication.
The hearing with a special master falls under the long-standing land use case that has been in ongoing litigation since 1981. This case, known as Lobato v. Taylor, has addressed historic access granted to the heirs of the Sangre De Cristo Land Grant. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld access and land use in 2002.
The special master was assigned to the case in 2022 to help mediate use of the ranch, also known as La Sierra, between the users and Harrison. The ranch is also home to 14,000-ft Culebra Peak, one of Colorado’s few private fourteeners.
The 88,000-acre ranch has been in the midst of a historic land war for the better part of 150 years. During the middle of the 20th century, timber barron Jack Taylor barred access to the land and restricted use almost entirely. This marked a new era for both the ranch and those who have claim to use the land.
Since Taylor, there have been a few different owners of the ranch; the most recent owner is Texas billionaire William Harrison who purchased the land in 2017. In 2021, Harrison began constructing an 8-foot-tall fence along the ranch’s boundary. Harrison also has been purchasing adjacent plots of land, according to map data found through Costilla County Assessor records.
The fence case is a separate case altogether, but for the historic land users, it’s all the same.
