Where I’m from we don’t really have any public lands. Much like Europe, New England is all privately owned. The 300 years of land purchasing, developing, and trading has left little unclaimed by some entity or individual. The American East, and especially the colonial region known as New England, has been a part of this nation since long before the concept of communal land occurred to the European settlers.
My hometown of Proctor, was originally called Southerland Falls but was renamed when it was purchased by the Proctor family with the intent of mining the natural marble deposits from the hills.
It’s been a quarry town since then and Proctor marble was used in the construction of the White House, Lincoln Memorial, and many other national monuments. (Including Shang Kai-shek mausoleum in Taiwan, which is a fascinating story I’d be happy to share sometime).
But after the quarries flooded and turned to limestone, the Proctor family sold most of the land to various other businesses and it was owned by the Omya Corporation of Sweden for most of my life.
As you can imagine, land that was mined over a hundred years ago isn’t very well kept, and most of it is now uninhabited wilderness.
We as the residents of Proctor feel a certain right to use the lands for outdoor recreation, but in truth we don’t have any explicit right to do so and the general rule to land use is that we just do it until we are told not to.
Much of that outdoor recreation is not responsible and cares little for environmental impact.
There is a general perception that Vermont is a liberal and possibly cosmopolitan place, but I assure you, it is big truck country.
It’s also very temperate and wet and one of our major backwoods pastimes is to go mudding, which is essentially just drag racing some beat up lifted trucks through flood pans.
Since these lands are not patrolled by rangers, and since these lands have no organized concept of use, many of our forests are graveyards of discarded car parts and abandoned trucks.
On the other hand, the Vermont Snowmobile Association operates an expansive system of trails. The organization acts as stewards and their care for longevity and order makes for a much better use of the land. Snowmobile trails are not littered with car parts, as the general use areas sometimes are.
The Seeley-Swan Valley is in a similar situation with the formation of the Scenic Montana Trails Club. This is a group which seeks to use the trails in a responsible manner, police them from misuse, maintain them and politically advocate for their protection.
There is and always will be concern that motorized vehicles will make a mess of the public land and that ATVs and motorbikes will damage the wildlife and natural habitat of the national forests.
But the technology has come so far, and many of the vehicles proposed are electric, have zero emissions, and make almost no sound. The days of two-stroke dirt bikes are nearing an end and motorized outdoor recreation is not only becoming more economical, but it’s becoming environmentally conscious.
As it stands, the land is already used, but mostly by off-grid campers who sometimes care for the land, and sometimes don’t. Cultivating trails for use by off-road vehicles would reclaim some control of that land and let the people of Seeley Lake make decisions about its use.
I fully understand concerns about cultivating wilderness spaces into off-road recreation trails and the idea that if those spaces were open to that, then maybe they will see too much use and be spoiled.
But I’ve also seen what happens when people are left to their own devices and decisions. That lack of oversight can cause a lot more damage and as you’ve seen in recent years, a lack of services and infrastructure does not deter people from coming here.
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