Treasure Of La Sierra - management of Taylor Ranch near San Luis, Colorado

Reason, Oct, 1999 by Karl Hess, Tom Wolf

Gilpin tried to sell La Sierra, but met staunch resistance from San Luisans long dependent on free use of its land and resources. Buyers were reluctant to invest in land whose title was colored by community claims to its forage, water, wildlife, and wood. That title would remain clouded for the next century. Trinchera was different: It had no history of communal rights. It sold to a series of buyers, and in 1969 was purchased by Malcolm Forbes.

By that time, Jack Taylor - former Golden Gloves champion, WWII fighter pilot, and self-taught real estate entrepreneur - had come to Colorado. Accustomed to seeking valuable land with clouded titles, Taylor set his sights on La Sierra's timber and hunting potential. A group of Denver businessmen sold it to him in 1960 for $500,000, or about $7 an acre. But there was a catch. The deed specified that the lands of La Sierra were "also subject to claims of the local people by prescription or otherwise to rights to pasturage, wood, and lumber and so-called settlement rights in, to, and upon said land."

The common-use rights laid out in the deed were remnants of Spanish and Mexican law, largely at odds with Anglo-Saxon traditions. More important, they were at odds with Jack Taylor's plans for the land. He went to federal court, where in 1965 he won clear title to the place he renamed the Taylor Ranch. But the controversy was just beginning. The civil rights movement had arrived, and cries of Brown Power! echoed through the Southwest. Across the region, Hispanics were laying claim to land they felt was theirs. In 1981, a San Luis organization, the Land Rights Council, sued to regain what it regarded as San Luisans' traditional rights to La Sierra. The lawsuit, Rael v. Taylor, sought the outright cession of the ranch to the plaintiffs, who claimed to be heirs of the settlers of 1851.

Taylor's legal success was not matched by any talent for public relations. When he first arrived, he fenced his property, barricaded the roads, armed himself and his employees, and beat trespassers and arsonists before hauling them into the Costilla County court. There he found himself booked on assault and kidnapping charges. He was convicted of minor assault and fined; the men he wanted charged went free. After his brush with assassination in 1975, he rarely returned to his ranch, where significant timber harvest and private big-game hunting took place, along with chronic poaching and trespass. He died intestate in 1988.

His son and executor Zachary immediately put the ranch on the market, in part to cover a loan to pay the crushing estate taxes. To enhance the ranch's marketability, Zack adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward traditional local uses of the land, leasing it for local grazing and eventually opening it to free community fishing, hunting, picnicking, and firewood collection. Unfortunately, the poaching and trespassing continued.

Even more damaging, his legal bills mounted, as Rael v. Taylor seesawed between state and federal courts. The plaintiffs attracted pro bono lawyers out of Denver, while the ACLU, the International Center for Human Rights Litigation, and a score of others filed amicus briefs, hoping to strike a blow for insurgent Hispanics and against resurgent capitalists.