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RENO, Nev. (AP) — One of Elko County's expert witnesses in a 15-year-old legal battle over control of a road in remote wilderness acknowledged Monday that he has never found a map or other historical document that shows a road or trail existed before the area was designated part of a national forest in 1909.
Land surveyor William Price testified as the second week of an evidentiary hearing resumed in U.S. District Court in Reno. The case pits the county against environmentalists suing to re-establish federal authority over the road in their ongoing effort to protect the threatened bull trout in the Jarbidge River near the Idaho border.
County officials maintain the road belongs to them based on a Civil War-era law that established rights of way for routes counties or others established as highways before the land was placed in federal reserve.
Price, who also served as one of the county's key witnesses at a hearing in 2006, testified for more than eight hours last week about mining claims along the river filed as early as 1894 and a cabin built there in 1903. He said the miners were searching stream bottoms for gold and couldn't have moved between claims without traveling the same route where the South Canyon Road exists today between 10,000-foot mountain peaks.
"On foot, there was only one practical way to go," he said last week at the hearing before District Judge Miranda Du.
On Monday, under cross-examination from a lawyer for the conservationists, Price repeated his belief that a trail was in use there.
"I believe it was well used by the early 1900s — to what extent I don't know," Price said.
Michael Freeman, a lawyer for The Wilderness Society, told Price, "You looked at hundreds and hundreds of documents in doing your research ... but you didn't find any maps with a trail or a road there before Jan. 20, 1909?"
"No," Price answered.
Freeman continued, "You didn't find any historical documents that indicate a road or trail prior to Jan. 20, 1909?"
"Not directly," Price said.
The government first sued the county and leaders of a group called the "Shovel Brigade" in 1999, accusing them of violating the Endangered Species Act with the unauthorized reconstruction of the washed out road along the Jarbidge River.
The government still denies such a right of way exists, but the Forest Service signed a settlement agreement in 2003 with assurances it no longer would challenge the county's claim.
The Wilderness Society and Great Old Broads for Wilderness sued to block the deal, saying U.S. officials lacked the authority to cede control of the road and shirked their responsibility to protect the bull trout. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and tossed out the agreement in 2005, before the agency signed a similar deal in 2011 and conservationists sued again.
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