{"id":48847,"date":"2021-02-03T21:17:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T04:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-requests-landowner-remove-gate-across-road\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:45:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:45:00","slug":"montezuma-county-requests-landowner-remove-gate-across-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-requests-landowner-remove-gate-across-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County requests landowner remove gate across road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=38c81f00-d979-4a83-8c52-369bf96f4857&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2292\" alt=\"Montezuma County Commissioners are asking a landowner to open and remove a locked gate across County Road Y southwest of Pleasant View.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Montezuma County Commissioners are asking a landowner to open and remove a locked gate across County Road Y southwest of Pleasant View.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Montezuma County<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Montezuma County commissioners claim a locked gate across County Road Y is illegal, and are working toward reopening the road.<\/p>\n<p>The road crosses private land and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument southwest of Pleasant View.<\/p>\n<p>A landowner has been locking a gate where the road enters a private property inholding within the monument, said county road supervisor Rob Englehart.<\/p>\n<p>A locked gate across a green-signed county road is not allowed, said county attorney John Baxter.<\/p>\n<p>Green-signed roads on the county map are public and cannot be blocked, he said. Red-signed roads are private and can be gated.<\/p>\n<p>The landowner told the county he is allowed to lock the gate based on a 2005 agreement with the Bureau of Land Management that allows BLM access.<\/p>\n<p>But Baxter believes any agreement for a locked gate across a green-signed county road is not valid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI let him know this is a county road, and we are asking that you make sure it always remains open or we may have to remove it,\u201d Baxter said.<\/p>\n<p>County officials said Road Y has been a public road since the 1950s.<\/p>\n<p>The gate has been an issue for a few years, Englehart said. It had been left open or unlocked for a while, but recently it has been closed and locked, he said.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, a party touring the monument by vehicle from the south were relying on the road to exit the area, Englehart said. They came across the locked gate at Road Y and were forced to turn around.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioners Jim Candelaria, Joel Stevenson and Kent Lindsay directed Baxter and Englehart to contact the landowner and request that he immediately open the gate and leave it open.<\/p>\n<p>They also set a timeline of 30 days for the landowner to remove the gate.<\/p>\n<p>The owner of the property is listed as Cortez LLC, A California Limited, according to the Montezuma County Assessor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>jmimiaga@the-journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Landowner cites agreement with BLM to block public access<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[829,21,13,28,60,29,976],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-canyon-of-the-ancients-national-monument","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-outdoor-recreation"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87469,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48847\/revisions\/87469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48847"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}