Catron County Puts Road Closure On Sept. 9 Commission agenda as State Land Office Lodges Complaint

By Ben Neary

NMWF

The Catron County Commission has posted notice that it may take action on Wed., Sept. 9 to address its failure to execute a written resolution in support of a commission vote last year to vacate a road that provided public access to tens of thousands of acres of prime hunting on state and federal lands.

Area hunters contacted the NM Wildlife Federation last month when they found that the Great Western Ranch had erected a locked gate across County Road A009 in northwestern Catron County. The gate, installed at a narrow strip of ranch land, leaves the public with no viable access to tens of thousands of acres of state and federal lands.

State law requires that a county commission must produce a formal, written resolution in order to abandon a road.

The NMWF filed a request with Catron County last month for records on the road closure. In response to that, county officials discovered that the commission had failed to execute a written resolution abandoning the road after the county commission voted on the issue Dec. 10.

The commission’s agenda for its Sept. 9 meeting states that the commission may vote to pass a resolution in support of last year’s vote. The agenda states the commission also may appoint a citizen panel to look at the road to determine whether it should be abandoned at all, starting the abandonment process over again.

The county commission voted last December to vacate the road at the request of the ranch, said Commission Chairman Buster Green. He works as ranch manager and abstained from the closure vote.

In the days before the vote, Green wrote to the county manager saying there was no reason for the county to continue maintenance on the road because it only led to the site of a demolished ranch house.

Green didn’t mention in his writing to the county manager that the road had provided public access to tens of thousands of acres of public land. And he didn’t mention that once the county abandoned the road, the Great Western Ranch that he manages would essentially have exclusive access to the hunting on the newly landlocked public lands.

Once a county commission receives a request to abandon or vacate a road, commissioners must appoint a panel of “freeholders,” meaning people who own property in the county, to examine the road and make a recommendation whether it should be abandoned. 

Catron County resident Dustin Armstrong served as one of the three freeholders who looked at the road last December in response to Great Western’s request to close it. He opposed the ranch’s application to close the road. The other two supported it.

“That’s a historical road, that road’s been there for years and years and years,” Armstrong said this week. “They can vacate county maintenance on these roads, but they can’t close them like that. I disagree with any closures that might box any trust land or BLM off to the public that’s been available for 100 years.”

Given the land ownership pattern in the area of the closure, Armstrong said it was clear that the ranch’s application would give it exclusive access to the public lands for its outfitter’s hunting operation. “And in my opinion I think that’s exactly the reason they did that,” he said.

Armstrong put his concerns in writing to County Manager Deborah Mahler before the commission vote. The minutes of the Dec. 10 commission meeting don’t reflect any discussion of his concerns and contain no mention that closing the road would block public access to cherished public hunting areas.

The NMWF published an article on Thursday about the road closure and the commission’s failure to execute a written resolution on its website and in social media.

The New Mexico State Land Office wrote to Catron County Manager Deborah Mahler on Thursday voicing strong opposition to county efforts to close Road A009 as well as another county road the commission closed at the same time, Road A028.

”These roads provide important public access to state and federal land that is important for hunting, recreation and regional connectivity for this area,” Dana Vackar Strang, assistant commissioner in the SLO’s Surface Resources Division, wrote to Mahler. “The County’s prior (December 2025) and prospective future vacation of the roads impedes the New Mexico State Land Office’s ability to manage state land and would restrict access to about 25,000 acres of public lands.”

Strang noted that the county commission voted in December to vacate the roads without prior notice to the land commissioner or other interested pirates and without coordination with land management agencies. She stated that the county failed to follow proper procedures in appointing the freeholder committee to evaluate the application.

“The State Land Office strongly supports maintaining public access to public lands,” Strang wrote. “Given the procedural deficiencies Catron County conducted prior to the announcement of this road being vacated, the County has a renewed opportunity to get things right and preserve public access.  The State Land Office  respectfully asks the Board of Commissioners  deny the original petitions and any future petitions to vacate or abandon County Road A009 (Pina Ranch Road) and A029 (Magnum Road) and continue providing access to more than 25,000 acres of state and federal land.” 

 An attempt to reach Green for comment on Friday was unsuccessful. In an interview earlier this week with the NMWF, he said the ranch is committed to providing public access to the state and BLM properties that had been reached by County Road A009, but said the access would need to cross state land to reach the public property.

The commission meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m., Sept. 9, at the Fire Administration Building, 3 Mountaineer Road, in Reserve, NM.