Lost Highways

A sampling of road claims around the West.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A sampling of road claims around the West:

North Escalante Canyons, Utah
To get to this narrow, water-filled gulch, listed as a “road” on Garfield County maps, you would have to drive over a waterfall and then somehow get a vehicle through curving sandstone walls that stand just five feet apart.

Garfield County

Barking Dog Trail

Barking Dog Trail, Colorado
This trickle of a stream is less than a foot wide in places. The Mile-Hi Jeep Club has formed a Barking Dog Shovel Brigade to widen what it says is an RS 2477 road and has torn down Private Property signs because they “harm trees.”

Surprise Canyon, California
This trail in Death Valley National Park is so steep jeepers used to drill holes in the rock and winch their rigs up seven waterfalls to get to the top. It’s been off-limits to vehicles since 2001, but off-road groups have filed an RS 2477 claim to get it reopened.

Surprise Canyon

Surprise Canyon

Route to Trail Hollow, Utah
Gravity is your worst enemy at “Harveys Fear,” shown as part of a road on Kane County maps. The Wilderness Society calls this plateau, home to a forest of 1,000-year-old junipers, “one of the least accessible areas in the country.”


More RS2477 road claims around the West:


Garfield County

Muddy Creek, San Rafael Swell, Utah

This popular swift-moving creek is called a highway, and it is: for summer kayakers. The Muddy Creek highway flows up to 500 cubic feet per second and provides habitat to wild horses and mountain lions.


Barking Dog Trail

Yampa River Canyon, Colorado
RS 2477 advocates argue that this gently flowing canyon river, a habitat for threatened bald eagles and peregrine falcons, was “built by Indians” in the 1800s. Apparently, Native Americans used the frozen river as a cattle trail in winters, which spells r-o-a-d for some.


Surprise Canyon

Arch Canyon, Utah
This popular hiking area near the Abajo Mountains is defined by its magnificent arches, fins, and spires, as well as its abundant Anasazi ruins and rock art. Off-road vehicle users motor through delicate riparian zones leading the Navajo and Hopi tribes to ask the BLM to assess and preserve the area’s unique heritage. The RS 2477 trail crosses one stream 60 times in 8.5 miles.


Surprise Canyon

Dry Blue Road, Gila National Forest, New Mexico

The Dry Blue Road was completely destroyed by a 1983 flooding of the Dry Blue Creek that runs along it. The following year, the road was closed by the Forest Service to protect the creek, a rare habitat for the native loach minnow. Catron County is trying to reopen the road to provide emergency vehicle access to a 48-acre subdivision, despite the fact that all the homeowners said they use a faster, more reliable road for emergency access and enjoy the peace and solitude.


Surprise Canyon

Last Chance Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California

Despite the temperatures, which can reach 130 degrees, RS2477 advocates want this “road” expanded into a two-lane highway up the nearly vertical wall of Last Chance Canyon. By Inyo County’s own admission, the road historically was used as a horse and foot-path. The Canyon was declared “roadless” in 1979.


Surprise Canyon

Greenwater Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California

Greenwater Canyon is unique because of 200-some petroglyphs left by Native Americans. Off-roaders cite the ancient drawings as evidence that the region was an Indian trail to support RS 2477 claims. The petroglyphs are now about 10-feet above the sandy canyon floor due to both water and vehicle erosion.


Got some other examples? Add to the list in the comments section below.


WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate