Catron County Road Closure Blocks Hunter Access; Leaves Public Lands Accessible to Ranch Run by County Commission Chairman

By Ben Neary

NMWF

As hunting season gets underway, some New Mexicans are encountering a locked gate on a road that for decades has provided public access to tens of thousands of acres of prime state and federal lands in northern Catron County.

The county commission voted Dec. 10 to abandon County Road A009, in northwestern Catron County. The request came from the 500,000-acre Great Western Ranch – one of the biggest ranches in the country. The road crosses a short length of ranch land before it heads north in miles of public land.

Catron County Commission Chairman Buster Green is manager of the Great Western Ranch. He abstained from the commission vote to close the road.

However, in the days before the commission vote, Green wrote to the Catron County manager saying there was no reason for the county to continue maintenance on the road because it only ran to the site of an abandoned ranch house.

 Green didn’t mention in his communication to the county manager that the road provided public hunting access. And he didn’t mention that once the county abandoned the road, the Great Western Ranch would then essentially have exclusive access to the hunting on the landlocked public lands.

The Great Western Ranch blocked the road last month, cutting off public access to about 60 sections of public land. A sign at the newly fenced off road gives Green’s name and number as the ranch contact. 

The New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s inquiry into Catron County’s actions in abandoning the road has county officials scrambling to try to address what appears to be an omission in how they approved the closure late last year.

The NMWF filed a request under the state Inspection of Public Records Act last month for all county records regarding the road closure. The request specifically asked for the formal declaration that the county commission signed abandoning the road.

This week, Catron County responded with some records, but stated it was not providing the written declaration because the commission never signed one. 

New Mexico law spells out requirements that a county commission or other political body must follow to vacate or abandon property or property rights on what has been a public road. The law states that such property rights “shall not revert until such property or property rights are vacated or abandoned by formal written declaration of vacation or abandonment which has been duly declared by the state or any commission ….”

Green and Louise Strain, assistant Catron County manager, said this week that they expect the Catron County Commission will address the road closure again at its meeting Sept. 9 in Reserve. However, they said it’s unclear what action the commission may take.

Both Green and Strain said they were unaware that the county commission hadn’t signed a declaration vacating the road until the NMWF requested it.

Once a county commission receives a request to abandon or vacate a road, they 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. 

One of the freeholders who looked into the ranch application last year urged the commission to reject it, saying it would block vital public access.

“The lawyers are looking into it right now, because an actual resolution isn’t required by law,” Green said. “But we’re looking to revise it as well. So if anything happens this week, it would just be the assignment of freeholders to review it again.”

Green said he’s talked to the owners of the Great Western Ranch about the situation. “There’s going to be access provided,” he said. “Even if the county road is still vacated, there’s going to be access provided to the state and BLM land.”

Green said he expects the new access could be open as soon as next week. “It won’t be at that county road. It will be another access point,” he said.

Green said he expects the new access to the public land will be west of the newly closed gate. He said it would go from state land to BLM land. “It would be up to the state to put in a road there, but they’ll have access from there. It depends on where they would want to build the road to, if they want to build a road,” he said.

Green noted that he recused himself from the commission vote to abandon the road. Asked about the closure's effect on his constituents who have accessed the public lands for hunting, he responded, “with them being provided public access, it shouldn’t make a difference now.”

Green said Catron County takes the position that once a county road is vacated by a vote at a county commission meeting, the road becomes private property. “So a county can not just say, ‘oops, sorry, we didn’t vacate that road,’” he said.

“The only way that the county could take back that road would be to condemn it and then offer reimbursement for the landowners cost for whatever they’ve done there and for the road, because then it becomes the landowner’s private property except where it goes through state and BLM,” Green said. “But where it goes through private, that now becomes private property once the road is vacated.”

The NMWF asked Green why the county would consider assembling a team of freeholders to look at the road abandonment issue again if the county takes the position that its December vote was legitimate despite not producing a written declaration.

“If there is any legal recourse for the county to say ‘we need to go back,’ and for the county then not to be sued by the landowner, if there is a possibility, then freeholders would be appointed,” Green said. “The process would go through again, in which the freeholders would be appointed, it would be posted for public comment and it would be voted on. If that is a legal option.”

Green said the county is still trying to decide how to proceed on the matter, but said something should be posted on its agenda for next week’s meeting by Friday.

Asked what Green would say to his constituents who feel the road never should have been closed, Green said, “I would tell them that they’re going to get access to it.”

Green said his work on the road never amounted to lobbying for the ranch position. He said he would have taken the same actions if the road had crossed land owned by another entity.

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.

“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.

After Armstrong was appointed a freeholder to consider the ranch’s application, he wrote an email on Nov. 25, 2025, to County Manager Deborah Mahler and Green. Armstrong warned Mahler that closing the road “cuts off access to many sections of public land that have been accessed for many years.”

Green wrote to Mahler and Armstrong on Dec. 1, 2025. He said the county road leads to the site of an old residence that had been torn down. “Since this road dead ended at an old residence, it is about 7 miles of road that the county still has to blade that is going nowhere.”

Armstrong wrote again on Dec. 8 to Mahler stating, “the A009 road is going to set a very bad precedent of closures because of the small amount of private at the beginning and the vast amount of public behind there. If we vacate it, there is a chance in the near future that a private gate will be installed restricting public access. I do not support the vacating of the A009 road. I can attend the public meeting tomorrow if needed to defend the public concern there.”

The minutes of Catron County Commission meeting held on Dec 10, 2025, have no mention of Armstrong’s concerns. It states that the other two commissioners, Audrey McQueen and Haydn Forward voted to abandon the road.

Armstrong said this week that he never met with the other two county residents who served as freeholders before the commission vote. 

“I got asked to be on that committee by Buster (Green),” Armstrong said. “I’m a neighbor, public land user and an outfitter. I disagreed. The committee never met, we never had discussions. I didn’t get the paperwork for the committee until like the day before the commission meeting.

“The procedure wasn’t done correctly by the county because all the stakeholders weren’t involved,” Armstrong said. “The committee never met, there was no discussions on it, other than somebody pushing for it that held a position.”

Armstrong said he used to be a resource management specialist with the U.S. Department of Interior and is familiar with how land management decisions are made.

“If we don’t bring enough attention to this, they’re just going to keep trying to close off these properties,” Armstrong said, “I don’t know what to do on this one. There are so many conflicts of interest involved in this from the ranch.” 

Catron County resident Troy Wood contacted the NMWF about the road closure. He said blocking the road has excluded the public from a truly special area.

“I’ve hunted and guided in it, taken a number of mature elk out there over the years,” Wood said of the area that’s now behind the locked ranch gate. “It’s one of the few places, if you look at the map, in Unit 12, that’s one of the few places where somebody can go and recreate and camp, because it includes BLM land. You can camp and hunt for mule deer, pronghorn or elk, and stand a good chance of being successful for one location.

“It’s a checkerboarded, difficult unit to navigate for BLM camping areas, and for hunting opportunities, especially for multiple species,” Wood said. “And it’s one of the few places in the unit, where somebody could go in there, and regardless of their physical disability or condition, stand a good chance of being successful.”

Wood emphasized that the road closure has blocked off public access to a huge amount of public land. “I believe when I looked at the map, and this is just a rough estimate, but I believe it’s roughly six or seven miles up by approximately 11 miles of contiguous state and BLM land that’s affected by this. “

The road closure means that the only way into the public land would be by walking long miles through treacherous terrain, Wood said. He said there would no longer be any way to get a trailer into the area.

“It’s one of those places that meets that perfect habitat diversity so the elk will utilize it throughout multiple portions of the year,” Wood said. He added that he’s a resident, homeowner and taxpayer in Northern Catron County – one of the people Green is charged with representing on the county commission.