Purchase in Santa Teresa’s becomes public land

[azdesertfather]

32,000 acres... does anyone know how to find out which land/where this is exactly out there?

http://tucson.com/news/local/purchase-o ... 503e8.html

Such a beautiful remote area...a part of the GET...

[jonathanpatt]

The 32,000 acres is presumably the public land that becomes accessible. BLM purchased the 640 acre ET Ranch on the east side of the range, adjacent to the BLM's North Santa Teresa Wilderness.

More details: https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secre ... nta-teresa

The ranch listing: http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/18157114 ... afford-AZ/

[big_load]

Great! That picture makes me itch to get on the trail again in AZ. I've been hiking so much in UT and CO lately and it's been too long.

[azdesertfather]

Thanks Jonathan!

[chumley]

I will be curious to see how this actually plays out.

I've marked up a map showing the relevant boundaries.

[ Boundaries of Interest - Santa Teresa :: map ]

The green segment in the center is the 600 acres of private land that was just purchased by DOI.

The red is the BLM-managed North Santa Teresa Wilderness, and the black is the FS-managed Santa Teresa Wilderness.

To the east in yellow is the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Note that this area of tribal land is closed to all entry.

The dark green square is a 40 acre ranch that has a ranch building and other improvements on it, and is also the end of a reasonably developed road from highway 70 (the 13 mile road referenced in the sale link above). The Graham County assessor lists the owner of this property as "USA", while the owner of the 600 acres is still listed as the "Trust for Public Lands" (that's who has agreed to sell it to DOI). The rest of the land between the red and yellow is non-wilderness BLM land.

Assuming that both parcels are now federally owned and will therefore allow recreational access, there is still the matter of getting across the reservation to get there. If the SCAT allowed people to drive through their land to access federal land, then there would already be access to the North Santa Teresa Wilderness. I'm not sure why that would change now?

As it stands, there is still private and leased state trust land south of the ET Ranch parcel which has always blocked easy access to the Santa Teresa Wilderness from the east side. The DOI purchase here makes no change to that access.

Hopefully, this is all clarified in the next few months...

[big_load]

Assuming that both parcels are now federally owned and will therefore allow recreational access, there is still the matter of getting across the reservation to get there. If the SCAT allowed people to drive through their land to access federal land, then there would already be access to the North Santa Teresa Wilderness. I'm not sure why that would change now?

Could it be that the ranch had an access agreement that's portable to the new owners?

[chumley]

@big_load
I hope so. It certainly sounds as if the people in the know are excited about this opening up access to NSTW. The news article talks about an easement and a parking area but that seems to be on the purchased property which doesn't make much sense to me.

[big_load]

@chumley
On topo map, that road appears to continue from the 13 mile mark to the ranch boundary, where it turns into a jeep trail that continues on into Dark Canyon. It looks like another road branches off from that 13-mile point and hits the ranch boundary further north. Of course there could be some kind of blockage at 13 miles. However, I don't see another practical way for the previous owners to have accessed the ranch. (It would be interesting if they had to cross the wilderness from the west by pack train, but "interesting" wouldn't their choice of words if that were the case.)

[johnny88]

A youtube video was put out on this: [ youtube video ]

I'm still not sure where the parking area the video references is supposed to be. And I don't see any updated maps published.

[nonot]

Thanks @chumley for the map!

I decided to spend some time studying maps, and have drawn the following conclusions (not that they are necessarily the correct ones!):

1) The only logical legal access would involve improving the road through Dark Canyon (Edit: Some maps call this Telegraph Wash) (this is an extension of the rd on Chumley's map that heads almost directly south after a quarter mile jog southeast from the old ranch buildings (mentioned by @big_load).) This is the only viable existing road to the land purchase that is not traversing the San Carlos Reservation. This section of road is only about 2 miles long and meets up with the existing forest road system a half mile east of Black Canyon Trailhead. It would not be hard to improve this section as it is almost entirely in a wash.

2) The complete road access isolation of the North Santa Teresa (due to the reservation closure) is almost certainly the claim for the 32000 acre number dished out. However, this is misleading. Santa Theresa is ~26000 acres and North Santa Theresa is ~6000 acres.

In reality, they are only improving access to Four Mile Canyon Trail, and off trail areas within the Four Mile Canyon basin. This access for hikers and sportsmen is only more easy for about a fifth of the overall North Santa Teresa wilderness and a 10th (being generous) of the Santa Teresa Wilderness, so a realistic number for improved access would be roughly 3800 acres. In my opinion, the other areas of North Santa Teresa and the Santa Teresa Wildernesses remain more easily accessible via the existing hiking trail system and existing trailheads (including the GET.)

3) There are 3 different poor quality ranch roads that branch from the road mentioned under #1. These roads are heading west about 0.8 miles (1.0 miles for the northernmost one), leading to a tank at the (old) start of the Four Mile Canyon trail, and it could be any of those 3 that were also improved. Based on the video it looks like the parking area is likely along one of these roads. You can see the road continue but be blocked off from driving in the video, and I didn't see the tank in the video, leading me to believe the parking area is somewhat closer to Dark Canyon/Telegraph Wash.

[nonot]

Spent some more time on this.

The road that they used (in the video) to access the trailhead is the ET ranch road (the road shown in Chumley's map), which crosses the reservation.
However, it is stated in the study that the ET ranch road is the primary access road, and that secondary access road will remain open. This secondary access road is the road via Telegraph wash, per my post above.
(see: maps on pages 8-9 of https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projec ... 006-EA.pdf)
It should be noted that these roads are mentioned as having an "easement with Graham county", but I do not know if this means they are exempt from needing a San Carlos permit. I'd advise to watch for signs.

The improved road is the northernmost of the 3 roads I mention in part 3 of my post above. This is the 1 of 3 old ranch roads that jogs north from just east of the ranch buildings and then heads west, just north outside the purchased lands for most of its route, about 1 mile in length to the historic start of the Four Mile Canyon trail. They have closed the road about 0.1 miles short of the historic start of the Four Mile Canyon trail.

Per video analysis in comparison to Google earth data, the trailhead is basically at the convergence of these 3 old ranch roads. I'd estimate the trailhead/parking position as: 32 deg 54 minutes 1.71 seconds North, 110 deg 7 min 39.69 seconds west, on the crest of a small hill, with the 0.1 mile remainder of the road that descends into Four Mile Canyon closed off to vehicles.

[OllieDood]

https://azsfwc.org/santa-teresa-wildern ... oject-map/