In a historic decision the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in June that Mexican land grant heirs in San Luis, Colorado do have rights to the 77,000-acre Taylor Ranch, locally known as La Sierra, located in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Southern Colorado. The Court restored partial rights to descendants of the original settlers by granting access to the land for grazing, firewood and timber purposes.
La Sierra is home to the headwaters of the Río Culebra as well as to miles of prime Río Grande Cutthroat Trout habitat. The Culebra drainage is part of the Río Grande watershed, although because of extensive agricultural diversions it no longer reaches the main stem of the Río Grande.
Descendants of the original settlers in the San Luis area had exercised rights to the 77,000 acres, granted to them in an 1844 Mexican land grant, for over one hundred years until Jack Taylor fenced off the land in 1960 and denied access to all. The Court states in the text of the ruling that:
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We find that evidence of traditional settlement practices, repeated references to settlement rights in documents associated with the Sangre de Cristo grant, the one hundred year history of the landowners’ use of the Taylor Ranch, and other evidence of necessity, reliance, and intention support a finding of implied rights in this case. |
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Although hunting, fishing and recreation rights are still being denied to the community, this recent decision represents a huge victory.
The Sangre de Cristo land grant dates back to 1844 when the governor of New Mexico granted a one million acre land grant to two Mexican nationals. Before the land was settled, war broke out and the two grantees were killed. Charles Beaubien was then granted ownership of the land grant and settlement began. Beaubien settled the land by allotting arable land to families for farming and he opened up areas not suitable for cultivation for common use. La Sierra was part of the large area of land designated as commons to be used for grazing, hunting, fishing, recreation, firewood and timber. Following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the war between the United States and Mexico, the U.S. agreed to honor the existing property rights in the extensive territory that Mexico ceded to the United States. The Sangre de Cristo Land Grant was part of this territory.
With the fencing of the land in 1960, Jack Taylor initiated a 40-year period of ecological and cultural injustice. One of the largest issues in the past decade has been Zachary Taylor’s (Jack Taylor’s son) decision to log huge tracts of La Sierra. Despite protest from local community members and the environmental community, he succeeded in his efforts to clear-cut a large portion of the upper reaches of the Culebra watershed. The communities in the Culebra drainage still feel the impacts of these destructive logging practices.
In July, the community’s team of lawyers headed by Jeff Goldstein filed a brief arguing that access to grazing, firewood and timber on La Sierra should be extended to all landowners in the Culebra drainage whether or not they were named as heirs of the original settlers of the land grant.
There is still much to be worked out and there is the possibility that the Taylor defendants might file a petition with the Court that could result in more litigation. As of now, this decision represents a major victory in a 21-year legal battle over the rights of the people of the Culebra drainage to access the land that is integral to their cultural, economic and ecological heritage. |
