Five-year fight with Army unites ranching community

LA JUNTA • The plywood signs are faded and weathered now, but the sentiment remains.

Every few miles along lonely stretches of Highway 160, Highway 350 and Highway 109, the flaking paint advertises that “This land is not for sale to the U.S. Army.”

In the grasslands of southeast Colorado, where cattle far outnumber people and neighbors are often 30 miles apart, the five-year-old fight with the Army is holding the community together.

“We ain’t going to quit,” said Aguilar rancher Stan White, noting that not even World War II brought the region together like the battle to block expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

Driven by pride, property and paranoia, the Piñon Canyon uprising has created one of the most powerful political forces in this part of the state, even as the Army retreats from expansion.

Since 2006, a few hundred ranchers and agricultural families in this region of southeast Colorado have stopped the Army effort to add land to its 235,000 acre training site dead in its tracks.

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The Army wanted the land to train the increasing number of troops at Fort Carson in the tactics used on far-flung battlefields, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army brass argued that new weapons and new training methods demanded a vast increase in acreage.

Congress has passed laws to block money for expansion. The state General Assembly banned the use of state land for expansion.

The Army is now waving a white flag. Top officers say expansion is off the table for the foreseeable future. The Army’s long-term budget has no provision for adding the land and efforts to find sellers willing to entertain an Army offer have stopped.

But in Trinidad, Kim, Rocky Ford and La Junta, locals want more. They want the military to promise, in writing, that they’ll never again seek land for the training site.

“Our species seems to come together when we have a common enemy,” Jim Herrell said in his cluttered office at Otero Junior College in La Junta.

Rancher Steve Wooten, one of the first vociferous opponents of expansion, said the fight has raised the profile of communities that most Colorado politicians couldn’t find on a map five years ago.

It has also driven locals to re-examine their communities and invest in the future.

“We’ve already seen communities like Kim taking on a multi-million dollar equine facility,” Wooten said, describing the tiny town’s $2.2 million rodeo pavilion that’s expected to drive economic development.

But with a mix of grants and local money, the structure is going up on the north side of town.

Lon Robertson, who owns the Kim Outpost general store, said the pavilion will bring life and economic activity to Kim with accomplishing another key goal — teaching children about rural life and giving young people one more incentive to stay on the ranch rather than seeking their fortune in the city.

Five years ago, this region was on the ropes. Drought and low beef prices were eroding the ranching community. Some people were pulling out, others feared losing their land to foreclosure.

When Army plans that envisioned adding 418,577 acres to the training site leaked in early 2006, some thought it would be the deathblow to a lifestyle that was already on its way out.
It didn’t work out that way.

“People in this country don’t give up easily,” Robertson said while sipping coffee in his store. “We don’t stay here for five or six generations because we give up easily.”

It was at Robertson’s store in this town of “almost 70” that the fight against Pinion Canyon expansion began.

The movement quickly rolled across the grassy plains. It seemed like everyone in a cowboy hat was ready to take on the Army.

Kennie Gyurman, who owns a ranch in Model just north of the Piñon Canyon fence, said groups that had never worked together suddenly found common cause.

“It’s gotten the county people, the city people and the ranchers all working together,” Gyurman said.

Fort Carson officials were in Trinidad and La Junta recently to explain plans for training on the existing Piñon Canyon site and to squelch talk of expansion. Scores of ranchers and local officials attended the meetings.

Fort Carson’s Col. Robert McLaughlin said the post has given up on even its scaled-down aspirations to acquire 100,000 acres.

“Given our training plans and our budget situation, we have no intention to expand,” McLaughlin said.

The Army has no cash for expansion in its five-year spending plan — the Pentagon’s longest-term budget outlook.

But McLaughlin couldn’t use the word that locals wanted to hear.

“It’s very difficult to say never,” he said, explaining that he can’t obligate future Army leaders with that kind of statement.

Locals worry that the Army could reverse course again, and that efforts to downplay expansion are just a tactic to soothe the opposition.

“In the past we have not been able to believe anything that has been told to us by the Army,” said Keith Goodwin, an Otero County commissioner and expansion opponent.

La Junta city councilman Michael Moreno said governments in the region have joined the opposition, but ranchers not politicians, are the ones keeping the Army at bay.

Ranchers packed the Trinidad City Council chambers Tuesday to oppose a resolution pushed by the Army that pledges support to troops and their families.

The city leaders toned down the resolution, originally proposed as a “community covenant” to a more lukewarm offer of support. Council members said they’re pro-soldier but didn’t want the resolution seen as an offer to support expansion.

It’s another example of what the ranchers can do when they flex their new-found muscle.
“It’s a real grass-roots movement,” Moreno said.

The movement’s latest goal is to get the Pentagon to explicitly forsake its desire for land in the region.

“We’re trying to preserve our land and our way of life,” Gyurman said. “We’re going to keep doing it. There’s no backing off.”

Robertson said the movement’s success has inspired people in the region to show that what was once seen as a dying rural lifestyle can thrive again.

“Had we not fought for this, the majority of people believe we wouldn’t be here,” he said.

Make no mistake — ranching hasn’t gotten easier. A recent cold snap had cowboys throughout the region patrolling the range all night so temperatures of 20 below wouldn’t claim newborn calves.

Ranchers warily eye the weather, the fear of another drought is constant.

But they’ve learned something through their fight with the Army.

“Five years ago, we had our heads hung down,” Robertson said. “We have succeeded and we will continue to succeed if we stay together.”
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