Last stand at Bair Ranch

Another letter has arrived at Bair Ranch. Just one more in a flood of nearly identical letters. The wording is casual, inviting, and easy to understand. The letters, printed on high-quality paper, come from real estate offices around the county and the region. And they always have the same basic message, addressed to Mr. Bair and family: “Hello sir, how are you? You stand to make a lot of money through a sale of your property, and if you decide to sell, please allow me to be your Real Estate Agent.”Craig Bair is holding one of these letters in the air by way of making a point. His eyes light up and his pupils sharpen and he gives his listener a gentle punch on the arm — one of his favorite punctuating gestures, apparently, meant to capitalize the importance of what he is about to say.”We get these letters all the time,” he says. “All the time. We’ve had people tell us we could sell this place for 20, 25 million dollars. That’s a lot of money.” He leans forward and gives the letter a little shake.”Suppose I was to go to my boys and I’d say, ‘Well boys, I could sell this and give you each a coupla million bucks.’ But that’s not what they want. It’s not what I want. We want to be able to get up on that horse and ride up into that country. That’s all we want, and I’ll tell ya’, that’s a true love of life.”When Bair talks about “that country”, he’s talking about 4,800 acres of prime Colorado ranch property at the mouth of Glenwood Canyon, a piece of land that’s been in his family since 1919. It’s the place where he, his father, and his six children were all born and raised.And his numbers are right on the money, so to speak. A movie mogul’s ranch near Aspen recently sold for $23 million, breaking real estate sales records and igniting hopes for a continuing economic boom in Colorado’s resort communities. Bair Ranch, by all indications, has the ability to break the $23 million barrier and still turn an ample profit for a developer.The acreage spans a huge chunk of the area between Dotsero and Glenwood Springs, sprawling over 3,313 acres of Eagle county and 1,524 acres in neighboring Garfield County. Water is abundant (by Colorado standards) in the form of four clear-running creek drainages, which carry yearly runoff to the Colorado River below. The Elk and Wasatch mountains are visible from the high plateaus in the Ranch’s undeveloped upper reaches, where bucolic terrain combines with majestic scenery to create the ideal setting for one more golf-club subdivision, a new gated community or possibly an entire new town. The land is made all the more rare by its setting in a fast-growing county where most of the private land has been purchased by developers or already developed.But real estate agents and developers haven’t been the only groups vying to buy the land. Beyond its proximity to Vail, Beaver Creek, Sunlight and Aspen ski areas, Bair Ranch is also surrounded on three sides by Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The BLM has been eyeing portions of the ranch for decades, and in 2001 bureau declared the property its most important pending land deal in the nation.With that priority listing came funds, and nearly $4.5 million was earmarked for the deal when the events of Sept. 11, 2001, forced the federal government to scrap the project and trim its budget. Quick on the heels of 9/11 came the worst summer of drought in Colorado’s recorded history, estimated by experts to be the worst in 300 years. The combined pressure of a struggling economy and a debilitating drought left the Bair family in dire straits. LeGrange Bair, who lives in Utah and owns a critical 1,160-acre plot in the center of the ranch, believed the time had come to sell his piece. If the Bairs were to hold onto their ranching heritage, something had to be done — and the future of one of Eagle County’s most coveted section of land was in the balance.Taxpayer money and a new dealSince 1982, the Eagle Valley Land Trust has been creating open space and helping landowners find ways to protect their land from development. By purchasing development rights — but not land — from property owners, the EVLT can preserve private land in an agrarian or natural state, expand the county’s open space, help keep lands under the control of private owners, and lower the value of a given property (thereby easing the owner’s tax burden).”We’re not opposed to growth and development,” says EVLT Director Cindy Cohagen, “but we can help property owners shape growth and work together with community planners to promote smart growth.”In its 22-year history, the EVLT has helped create 10 conservation easements in Eagle County totaling 2,227 acres or roughly 3 1/2 square miles.And now Cohagen is leading the local charge to more than double the conservation acreage in Eagle County by creating an easement on the Eagle County portion of Bair Ranch.”When you step back and take all the political issues out of this deal, you can see this transaction as a 4,800-acre opportunity,” she says. “It’s a working ranch, which are quickly vanishing in the American West. Its rich in conservation values; its wildlife habitat is tremendous, it has four pristine drainages which obviously have an impact on the Colorado River. And it’s surrounded by federal land, which means (a conservation easement) could keep that whole swath of land intact.”Cohagen has formed an alliance with Christine Quinlan of The Conservation Fund, Great Outdoors Colorado (GoCo), the BLM and the Bair Family in an effort to put together the money to create the easement.GoCo originally put up $400,000 toward the effort, and added another $600,000 to the cause this past August. The BLM has allocated $1.5 million for a total of $2.5 million.All of this, however, is still well short of the estimated $5.3 million cost of getting a multi-part deal to go through. And that’s where politics begin to complicate the deal, because the Eagle Valley Land Trust is on the verge of applying for a grant from the brand-new Open Space Advisory Committee — the group charged with allocating the $2 million-a-year expected to come from a new open-space tax passed in Eagle County in 2002. The Eagle Valley Land Trust needs that $2 million in tax dollars to make the deal go through — but not everybody is pleased about the way the EVLT wants to use the money.Critics point out that only 521 acres of the 4,800-acre ranch would become public land. Moreover, that 521-acre parcel adjoining the south bank of the Colorado River is technically being purchased with part of the BLM’s $1.5 million. The $2 million in taxpayer money would go toward creating the Eagle County portion of the Bair Ranch easement — which would remain open to the Bair family, their guests, and the thousands of sheep they hope to bring back to the land.”People are concerned about the idea that there will only be access to 512 acres of the Ranch, and not the other 4,300 acres,” Cohagen says. “But if it were to be sold for development, quite likely there would be no public access either.”The public, in essence, is paying part of the $2 million for a 512-acre riverside site, but mostly for the knowledge that the rest of the ranch will never be developed or subdivided.One of the most vocal skeptics of the deal has been County Commissioner Tom Stone, who eventually approved the process but was slow in doing so, citing reasons similar to those mentioned above.Stone, who is also a real estate agent, claimed during a meeting last fall that he didn’t have anything to do with the possible sale of the ranch. But Craig Bair says he asked Stone’s advice as a friend several years ago. Bair says Stone drew up a contract and advised Bair to sell a perimeter chunk of land, buy up his brother’s parcel, and keep his options open.”Stone didn’t (recuse himself from the voting process),” Bair says. “He tried to say that he didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s a big lie.”The Open Space Advisory Committee will receive an application from the EVLT sometime in the coming weeks. Their decision will set a precedent for how the county’s open space dollars are spent.”If you look around the state, you’ll see that public money being spent on public lands, not every inch of it is open to the public,” Quinlan points out. “That’s not to say that (wanting open space to be public) isn’t a fair desire, but if you look at the places in the state where they’ve been spending public money — it’s not all open to whatever the public wants to do with it.”And the goal of the effort isn’t necessarily to keep the Bair’s sheep operation alive, Quinlan says — it’s to keep the land from undergoing the kinds of changes that come with road-building, infrastructure, water and sewer lines, and higher human density.”It’s not about the Bairs, in a way,” she says. “They happen to be the current stewards of this land, and they want to keep control of it — but we’re doing this because we want this land to stay intact well into the future.”Counting sheepThe sun has just come over the lip of the canyon wall when Craig Bair fires up his flatbed truck and pulls away from the hay shed. After a jarring ride over a muddy road, Bair pulls into a small field and begins arcing a wide turn through wind-crusted snow. A scrappy old dog, who looks to be part blue-heeler and part everything else, barks and nips at the truck’s bumper and tires as Bair makes his morning rounds.This is the routine — for now: Wake up before first light and get the two youngest girls, Kacey Lynn and Jamie Lynn, ready for school. Put them in the big Ford dualie pick-up truck (the one with the “Eat Lamb” license plate) and drive them to the bus stop. After that it’s time for chores — which basically means tossing hay to the horses, cows, and 40 remaining sheep on the land.”Everyone is in such a hurry these days,” Bair says. “They see you out on the road, moving your sheep around, and you don’t know if they’re going to give you the finger or they’re going to jump out of their cars and praise you and take your picture — but it’s always one or the other.”With only 40 head, moving sheep is relatively easy, and the whole ranch runs with only a bit of help from Ricardo Solis Daniel, a Chilean ranch hand, Craig’s second son, Jeff, and Craig’s wife, Doris Pauline.As relaxing and pastoral as this scene appears, it doesn’t bode well for the Bairs, who had as many as 6,000 sheep only three years ago. Drought made their wintering grounds in Utah useless, and the price of sheep plummeted as the drought created a glut in the market. The Bairs had tried to survive drought a decade before by moving their wintering grounds to the Eastern Slope, but the expenses that time around made Craig Bair swear he’d sell all his sheep next time a big drought came around.And life wasn’t exactly easy before the drought.”Business is so poor right now,” he told the Glenwood Post in a June, 2000, interview. “It used to be they’d work like heck and save and sell the sheep and buy some ground. Now you work like heck and sell the sheep and sell some more ground just to keep going. There’s no more buying ground.”Despite the difficulties, Bair is still determined to pick up the pieces and reinvigorate his operation.”You know, there’s been some people out there who have said that I’m not really a legit sheep operation, and that really frosted me,” he said. “I’ve got the sheep camps, I’ve got the permits (to graze on public lands) that took us four generations to build — I’ve got everything except the sheep.”He even has his own personalized sheep camp — a compact trailer with folding beds, a cast-iron stove, a microwave and “Craig’s Home” stenciled across the door. The effort to buy his brother’s land and preserve his way of life is taking up most of his time now — “Even Sundays,” he says — but when Bair gets back to proper wool-growing he hopes to spend the greater part of the winter in that trailer, following his sheep and his herders through Utah.If the Open Space Advisory Committee approves the funding and the deal does go through, Craig Bair will be putting all his eggs in the sheep-herding basket. The Bairs will still be able to sell the land, but the value would drop significantly if development is no longer an option.In the meantime, the Bairs have decided to diversify, opening up a dude-ranch operation in the summertime for tourists who want to ride horses, fish, and briefly live the ranching lifestyle. Between the dude ranch and the sheep operation, they hope to make enough to keep the Bair legacy alive — and in the meantime prove to their fellow ranchers and neighbors that there is, in fact, a way to continue ranching in Eagle County.”We’re the ones making the sacrifice. The only thing we’re keeping is our heritage, our way of life,” Bair says. “My biggest fear is if I can’t make it with sheep and agriculture. Then what would I do?”Bones and waterIt was just about 40 years ago when Vaniel Bair, Craig Bair’s sister, was not feeling well during a school day, and asked permission to go home. When she arrived she found that her father, James Golden Bair, was leading sheep across a footbridge that spanned the Colorado River. Something went wrong, the bridge collapsed and a score of sheep plunged into the river. A cable snapped and whipped across the river to where the 10-year-old Vaniel was patiently waiting, slashing her across her neck.James Golden Bair was trapped, with a broken foot, underneath wreckage on the other side of the river. With the help of two ranch hands, he freed himself, but with the bridge gone he had to swim across the river. When he made it to his daughter she was gone.For a time after that, young Craig and his father lived in a sheep camp on the north side of the river. There was no bridge, and no easy way to get to and from Dotsero and the ranch. The father and son drank directly from the Colorado River, and lived out their time of mourning together.Dotsero was a central location for Craig Bair when he was a youngster — but it still wasn’t the bustling place it was in the early 1900s, when Joseph Elmer Bair came from Utah to become one of the first sheep herders in the lower portion of the valley.Sheep ranchers, as any hand will tell you, don’t generally get along with cattlemen. These days it boils down to a few lighthearted arguments on the relative intelligence of the two creatures, or their various effect on the olfactory systems, or other exchanges meant mostly in jest.But the introduction of sheep wasn’t so funny to the cattlemen of Eagle County back in 1919 — and they made sure that Joseph Elmer was aware that he wasn’t welcome to graze his animals on new country.Back then the steam train made a big stop in Dotsero, where ranchers could load and unload animals coming to and from the market. A few dozen cattlemen gathered together and threatened to shoot every sheep and all the sheep ranchers that came off the train at that stop — but Joseph Elmer wasn’t deterred. He convinced the train engineer to pull over near Hanging Lakes, where he unloaded his band of 1,800 sheep.Unfortunately for Joseph Elmer his sheep had been sheared before boarding the train, and when a spring storm rolled through the canyon, more than 200 sheep were lost.It was a rough introduction to life in the mountains, but it wouldn’t be the Bairs last difficult experience. It is part of the day-to-day life of sheep ranching to face hardships of a gruesome nature. A mountain lions at play slaughtered 98 sheep on one night in the late 1980s — an event documented by the Division of Wildlife. Many of the animals were still alive and dying when they were found, and it was part of Craig Bair’s duty to put them out of their misery.Bears are also known to prey on sheep, turning them over on their bellies and tearing away the udders to drink a ewe’s milk before leaving it to die and finding another victim.And in the cold nights, when an ewe gives birth, a rancher must be on hand to ease complicated births and care for lost or injured sheep. There is the process of cutting off lamb tails to keep sheep from developing maggots on their hindquarters, and there is the tough duty of shepherding and moving sheep with the seasons.And the work does not stop.”I’ve had people come on and work for me, and they do it for a while but then they want to get up into town, or have a weekend,” Bair says. “But a sheep doesn’t know the difference between Wednesday or Sunday, and it doesn’t care if it’s night or if it’s day — for them it’s all the same.”And Jeff Bair, 18 years old and freshly graduated from Eagle Valley High School, has the option to turn to his father and let him know that the sheeping life isn’t for him. Jeff could say that he’d rather turn over the ranch to a developer and cash in for the big bucks.But he, like his five brothers and sisters, doesn’t want to do it. A life of ease and money has been presented to them, but they simply don’t want it.”It’s been in the family so long, and as a family we’ve put so much blood and sweat into it, we’ve all just fell in love with it,” Jeff says. “We don’t want to get rid of it, we want to hold onto it forever.”And if the Open Space Advisory Committee decides to approve the $2 million in open space taxes for the Bair Ranch project — that’s exactly what Jeff, Craig, Jason, Kacey, Jamie, Doris, and Vaniel (named after Craig’s sister), and all the next generation of Bairs (and beyond) will be able to do.Contact Tom Boyd at tboyd@vailtrail.com or (970) 390-1585.