A battle over public use of paths into a northern Utah mountain escalates

Clarkston • Curtis Godfrey has spent his entire 72 years in Clarkston, a small northern Utah farming town of about 750 people, tucked by the western slopes of Clarkston Mountain.

As a boy, Godfrey said he often roamed the mountain trails on horseback and hiked through Winter Canyon, a rugged landscape familiar to generations of families in his hometown.

Over the years, he returned with his children — and later with Boy Scout troops — clearing brush and helping maintain the narrow paths that wind up the mountain’s steep slopes.

“My first few times going up there were always on a horse. We’d have them shuttling the ponies and the first time I went up, I was like 10, 12 years old, and I was bareback on one of those,” Godfrey said, laughing at the memory. “It was just me, my brother, and some friends.”

The mountains form the western edge of Cache Valley along the Utah–Idaho border, part of the Malad Range and crowned by the 8,200-foot Gunsight Peak. The ridge is a patchwork of U.S. Forest Service land and private parcels.

But access to those mountains has become the center of a legal battle after a private landowner started blocking off access to paths that lead into the foothills.

Scott Shriber, who owns an 800-acre ranch at the base of the ridge near Gunsight Peak, says the routes now in question are private trails crossing his land, not public county roads.

He put up “No trespassing” signs, cameras and fencing around his property — and the paths leading into the mountains.

However, Godfrey and other residents say for decades, the paths have been used to access public lands on Clarkston Mountain — through Winter Canyon, Elbow Canyon, Green Canyon, Old Canyon and New Quigley Canyon.

Cache County Executive George Daines said the dispute reflects a broader tension playing out across Utah, where long-standing recreational use is increasingly colliding with changing land ownership and shifting interpretations of public access law.

How the case is resolved, he said, could influence how Cache County — and other communities across the state — handle similar conflicts in the future.

“It’s an ongoing problem all up and down the state,” Daines said. “Landowner buys land that’s on the foothills of the mountains and wants to restrain citizens from going through the foothills to the mountains that are public.”

Tensions flare in Winter Canyon

The dispute has turned into dueling lawsuits in the Utah’s First District Court in Logan.

In 2024, Shriber and his company, Winter Canyon Ranch LLC, sued Cache County over the contested routes.

In response, a group of residents formed Clarkston Mountain Conservation, a nonprofit advocating for continued public access, and filed a separate suit against the landowner alongside BlueRibbon Coalition, an Idaho-based national nonprofit that pushes for recreational access to public lands.

The debate escalated in November, when a BlueRibbon Coalition member riding a dirt bike along the path leading into Winter Canyon was stopped by Shriber and three other men.

Shriber is seen in a video with a gun strapped to his chest as he spoke to the man. Both Shriber and the man called the Cache County Sheriff’s Office, according to a probable cause statement. Shriber was arrested on suspicion of unlawful detention, but no charges appear in court records.

The man recorded the encounter and provided the video to the BlueRibbon Coalition, which provided it to The Salt Lake Tribune with the faces blurred.

In December, Cache County Sheriff Chad Jensen said in a statement that motorized vehicles are not permitted on the routes, and access is allowed only by walking, hiking, biking or horseback while litigation is ongoing.

“Please note that any movement off the designated roads may be considered trespassing,” Jensen said. “We do not want a violent incident due to a trespassing issue.”

Daines, the county executive, said the question of whether — and how — the routes are open to the public during the litigation has caused confusion on both sides, and the issue will likely head back to court for clarification.

A dispute over access

If the routes are blocked off by the ranch, BlueRibbon Executive Director Ben Burr said, public access into the mountain would be cut off.

“If he succeeds at this, he will be land-locking the public almost entirely out of high-value recreation public land that’s otherwise owned by the Forest Service and should be there, available for all of us to go use and enjoy,” Burr said. “We won’t be able to because we can no longer use the long-standing county roads that have been getting us up there for forever.”

Since the 1860s, Burr said, settlers and residents have accessed the slopes through the contested routes for gathering wood, livestock grazing, hunting and travel. Over time, he said, the paths were also used for recreation, including dirt bikes and ATVs.

“Some of these roads were there before the private property deeds were even created,” Burr said. “The community there has been using those trails continuously since they’ve been settled.”

Until 2023, the private land on the mountain was held by families who had owned it for generations, some dating back before 1900, according to Winter Canyon Ranch’s complaint.

That year, the complaint says, Shriber purchased several adjacent parcels near Gunsight Peak, established Winter Canyon Ranch, and became the primary private landowner, holding seven parcels.

Shriber’s attorney, Bruce Baird, said the disputed routes were never legal public roads.

“There’s a state statute that says if the public has used a road for 10 continuous years, it’s dedicated as a highway,” Baird said. “There’s no evidence that the public has used these trails as a road, basically at all.”

Baird said that while residents may have used the routes for hiking, horseback riding and dirt biking, that kind of use doesn’t qualify the paths as public “highways” under Utah law.

He said the statute applies to roads used for standard vehicle travel, not narrow trails used primarily for recreation.

Residents and advocacy groups counter that the routes have long been mapped and labeled by the county as public roads, which Burr said is reflected in the warranty deed noting the sale excluded county roads.

Decades of continuous use, he said, have created public rights-of-way under Utah law.

Ben Burt, who has lived in Clarkston for more than a decade, said he respects Shriber’s rights as a property owner but believes the trails should remain open to the public.

Burt said many live in rural areas “because we care about our property.”

“We want to have a say about our property. So we understand that this guy wants to be able to develop on his property,” Burt said. “It’s not right for them to be able to cut off complete access to that federal land. That’s the difference.”

For many in Cache Valley, Burt said, access to trails in their own backyard is part of the lifestyle that draws them to the area.

Godfrey, the Clarkston resident who grew up with the trails, said protecting access isn’t just about recreation — it’s about preserving decades of family tradition. The trails carry memories of childhood horseback rides, hunting trips, scouting outings and long summer hikes — experiences he hopes to share with his grandchildren.

“I have a bunch of grandkids. They’re getting older, too, but I haven’t had them up there, but I want to; I want them to be able to go,” he said. “That’s one of my concerns, is the things that I’ve enjoyed growing up, and the scouting and taking my family up there, if he gets his way, we won’t be able to do that.”