Closure of Taylor Ranch case nearing

Senior Judge Gaspar Perricone told the Pueblo Chieftain that the long drawn out civil case of Taylor Ranch is coming to a close. The ranch is a 77,500-acre property that has been bought by Jack Taylor in 1960.

The ranch is one of the largest, privately owned, undeveloped chunks of mountain range left in Colorado. For communities in the southern end of Costilla County, where farmers use the oldest irrigation ditches and water rights in the state, it's the top of the watershed.

Taylor bought the ranch for $500,000 (roughly $7 an acre). The price was cheap because there were clouds in the title:

"... subject to the claims of the local people by prescription or otherwise to rights to pasture, wood and lumber and so-called settlement rights in or upon said land ..."

Local residents for generations were able to graze their cattle on the ranch but it all changed when Taylor fenced off the property in 1960 and put in no trespassing signs. The local residents sued and won an odd-ball claim claiming that Spanish land grants issued in the 19th century applied to U.S. property law. Taylor's descendants have attempted to sell the property and have sold its timber to pay for legal costs, which further caused an uproar in the area as truckloads of limber came passing by the county roads.