Categories
Easement Questions
- If I Want to Donate an Easement in Montezuma or Dolores Counties, Who Should I Contact?
- What are the Costs of Completing a Conservation Easement?
- How Can Giving an Easement Reduce Taxes?
- How Is The Value of A Conservation Easement Determined?
- What Does The Land Trust Do?
- Who May Give, and Who May Accept A Conservation Easement?
- How Long Does A Conservation Easement Last?
- Does A Conservation Easement Allow Public Access?
- How Restrictive Is A Conservation Easement?
- What are the “Conservation Values” that qualify?
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Category Archives: Landowner Experiences
I cannot…bring myself to even consider breaking up and/or selling what I view as a family legacy that could never be replaced. Sometimes certain things transcend monetary issues or what might seem the most logical course at a given point in time.
Hopefully, the easement will enable the flexibility of economics to help future generations maintain the land in its historic use and form. It will be a tool to possibly eliminate many temptations and pitfalls that can run concurrently with land ownership and life.
It is our intention to encourage and enable good stewardship and preservation of an increasingly rare legacy with both public and private aspects for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations.
Rick Lee
Just east of the Utah line, Bob and Mary Johnson have protected 400 acres in Yellow Jacket Canyon that is surrounded by Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Bob, a real estate developer, remarked that “it would be a crime to subdivide this place.”
“Subdivisions ought to be in town….any time a guy protects agricultural land from houses, he is doing a good thing.”
- Conservation easement donors Eddie and Ethel Murphy farm in Pleasant View.
“This is an excellent way to protect our rural life. We love this open space country.”
Dolores County landowner and easement donor, Max Dicken
Reddert – Menefee Ranch
Ryan Brown statement on behalf of family regarding completed Reddert – Menefee ranch easements with MLC:
“The family has been attached to this land in a way that’s hard to describe The family has been attached to this land in a way that’s hard to describe, but which I’m sure a lot of people will understand. As kids my brothers and I rode it regularly with our grandfather Fred Reddert, known to many as ‘Doc’, and even once with our grandmother Lottie, who still rode sidesaddle. My mother Norma Brown rode it many years before with George Menefee, who was Fred’s step-father, and she still walks it regularly with her thistle cutters. Generations of local ranchers and others have helped work the ranch, including members of the Lewis, Halls, Ignacio, Ismay, Semadini, Robbins, and Cox families. Together with my aunt Naomi Reddert, my mother and father and brothers and I are happy to be able to help preserve this bit of Mancos Valley heritage, and we are thankful to MLC for helping us make it possible. We hope the place will give our own kids some of the perspective it’s given us, and that future generations will continue to enjoy the views up Echo Basin Road.
RSL Ranch 2008
RSL Ranch, LLLP is the current incarnation of a 134 year old, seven generation in the works, ranching/farming tradition. The ranch was homesteaded in the Montezuma Valley in 1874 by H.H. Ritter, a Civil War veteran and the great-great grandfather of Richard Lee, the present managing general partner of RSL (Ritter/Schlegel/Lee) Ranch. RSL is a Colorado Centennial Farm as recognized by the Colorado Historical Society.