A group that fenced off about 1,400 acres of U.S. Forest Service land outside Mancos after claiming ownership over it is now being sued by the federal government.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Colorado, U.S. attorneys called the Free Land Holder group’s fence “unlawful,” citing the federal government’s title to the land that it manages through the Forest Service for recreation purposes and cattle grazing.
The U.S. is filing the lawsuit, attorneys wrote, to prevent further harm to the land and public and “ensure continuing free and lawful access to public property.”
The lawsuit names Patrick Leroy Pipkin and Bryan Hammon, two members of the Free Land Holder group, as well as anyone else who helped build the fence.
Pipkin said his group is eager to meet with representatives of the U.S. government to discuss his group’s claim to the land. His group agreed with the Montezuma County sheriff in October to not erect any more fencing until the claims are settled, he said.
“I do not see any reason to be troubled by this lawsuit because these are legal claims,” Pipkin said in an interview late Tuesday.
Pipkin said he is Native American and his group has Native American members who trace their presence on the property back “before there was a United States.” He declined to mention the Tribes he was working with.
He said the group’s Native Americans “are prohibited forever from joining the United States.”
“We will be able to show our claims and the status of what the United States has done to us and we will show that we were here before anyone else,” he said. “We are in a good place. A lot of stuff is being talked through at the moment.”
Hammon could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Free Land Holder group sparked outrage last month when it began posting public “proclamations” claiming owners of more than 1,400 acres the group had fenced inside the Forest Service north of Mancos. Locals called their fence an “outright theft” of public lands.
The group’s posters around the Four Corners region cited ownership claims connected to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war between Mexico and the U.S., with Mexico ceding about half its territory, including present-day California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico, and most of Arizona and Colorado to the United States of America. The group also claims the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 and deeds issued to the U.S. in 1927 in Montezuma County show the group’s ownership of the property.
“We are claiming we have the rights to that land through being the habitants and the free land holder that we can show through paperwork and treaty law,” Pipkin told The The Colorado Sun shirttail in October.
Pipkin said the Free Land Holder group would not limit public access on the land, but said that any contracts with the Forest Service to graze cattle in the area would expire at the end of the year.
Group members tied neon surveyor tape to trees, removed vegetation and trees, installed metal fence posts and tied wooden and metal braces, and strung barbed wire on the fenceposts and braces along the boundary lines of the area, the lawsuit stated, adding that “several miles” were fenced off.
Some of the fencing is still on federal property, the lawsuit stated.
The Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office and Forest Service met with the group, before the sheriff’s office issued a statement informing the public that hiking, biking, grazing and hunting was still open on the land. The Free Land Holder group agreed to pause any new fence construction as the land dispute headed into federal court.
Local residents, with tools in hand, dismantled the fencing last month to reclaim the land, as Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin and deputies stood by to “document” it and “keep the peace.”
“Let a judge decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Who’s to say who’s right, who’s wrong? What if they’re right? Let it happen in court,” Nowlin said last month, underscoring that his authority did not extend to enforcing or resolving the civil dispute on federal land.
The federal land falls within the Mancos/Dolores Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest. The Chicken Creek area is popular among Mancos locals, who ski on the area’s groomed trails in the winter and hike and ride bikes on single-track in the summer.
After several private owners bought the land through the Homestead Act, the U.S. reacquired the land, known as the Hallar Deed Area, after owner Fred Hallar offered the land in 1927 in exchange for timber. One of the reasons the Forest Service wanted to reacquire the land was for watershed protection, the lawsuit stated.
Now, the area is used nearly every day by hikers, bikers, horseback riders and hunters, the lawsuit stated. On one trail, the Blue Jay trail, the Forest Service counted thousands of individual visits from May through October 2024.
It is also used for about 500 cattle to graze from the spring to the fall, the lawsuit stated.
Tim Hunter is a longtime resident of Mancos who was part of a group that took down the fencing around Chicken Creek in October.
He called the group’s proclamations claiming they are “superior land holders” of more than 1,400 acres in the San Juan National Forest “completely fictitious.”
“There are 360 million-plus Americans who have a superior claim to that land,” Hunter said. “They say they are not U.S. citizens. They say they don’t have birth certificates. So they have no natural rights to any of our public land.”
Hunter said locals are irked by the slow wheels of the bureaucracy. He said if he had taken his four-wheel truck off the road and onto the trails around the Forest Service-managed land where the group erected miles of fencing “I would still be in jail.”
“It’s almost unfathomable the way they are going about this. They say they have honor but they went behind everyone’s back and put all that fencing. That is totally dishonest,” Hunter said.
“We understand there is a lot of paperwork filed by this group and the Department of Justice needs to go through all its procedural things. It just seems a little slow to folks around here.”
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