Part of the Colorado experience, for those who are physically able, is to climb one of our 14,000 foot peaks. And one of the easiest ways to do that, especially for people in the Denver metro area, has been to hike to the summits of Mounts Democrat, Lincoln, Bross and Cameron in the Mosquito Range between Alma and Breckenridge.
But perhaps no longer. The Forest Service has declared these peaks off limits, declaring that old mining claims around the summits are private property and that hikers need to get permission from the owners of the claims if they can be found. If this policy is followed around the west, untold acres of currently public land might become off limits, with predictably devastating results for recreationists and the industry that supports them. Already there are two more fourteeners in southern Colorado (Culebra Peak and Mt. Wilson) that might fall victim to the policy.
But what about private property? you may ask. I say, what about private property owner's responsibility. Assuming what the Forest Service says is true, what you have is some mining claim owners who have, for literally decades, allowed the public to hike over their property on trails that have been marked as Forest Service trails. I hiked on those trails 21 years ago myself and I don't recall any indication that any part of them was private property. Hikers and the tourism industry ought to look at filing suits to declare that the trails have become public highways under the doctrine of adverse possession, which is a kind of use-it-or-lose-it law regarding private property.
My guess is that this is all a shakedown -- the mining claim owners will now get the Bush administration to pay them hefty sums for the "taking" of private property that hasn't been used for so long that the public justifiably believed it was already public land.