We Did It!!

Save Our Canyons, in partnership with the Sierra Club and the Wasatch Mountain Club, worked with Salt Lake County to negotiate the repudiation of all their RS 2477 Claims. In a letter to the Utah Attorney Generals Office, Mayor Corroon stated he has "decided to withdraw any current or future claim by Salt Lake County." We commend Salt Lake County for setting the stage in the State of Utah concerning RS 2477. A big thanks to everyone involved for a job well done.

Click here to browse the research Save Our Canyons compiled and submitted to Salt Lake County in 2005, which ultimately led to Mayor Corroon's April 11, 2006 decision.

About RS 2477

A Monumental Threat to Our Natural Treasures

Across the West, state and local governments are getting ready to file thousands of unsubstantiated claims for federal rights-of-way under the provisions of an 1866 mining law known as RS (Revised Statute) 2477. Repealed by Congress in 1976, this law was originally intended to serve the narrow goal of granting the right to construct and use highways across public lands that were not otherwise reserved or set aside for other public uses (such as to protect water supplies, forests, wildlife, or scenic beauty). Instead, it is now viewed as a loophole to allow the bulldozing of a spider web of roads across some of our most scenic and valued national parks and refuges.

The great majority of these phantom-road claims are illegitimate assertions meant to undermine federal protected areas, thwart wilderness protection (because the presence of a road generally disqualifies an area for wilderness designation), and serve special interests, such as mining, timber, oil and gas industries, and off-road-vehicle users. Some counties are asserting RS 2477 road-building rights-of-way claims for cow paths, horse trails, riverbeds, off-road vehicle routes, and for overgrown trails that have not been maintained or driven on for decades, if ever.

Although many of these claims are obviously bogus, the threats are all too real. The unmanaged and unnecessary creation of new roads in pristine areas would degrade water quality, destroy and fragment wildlife habitat, increase the risk of vandalism to archeological sites, encourage the destructive use of off-road vehicles outside of designated-use areas, increase erosion, destroy the peace and quiet of wild areas, and undermine conservation efforts for lands that are meant to be preserved for future generations. This long-outdated statute would allow special interests to bulldoze highways, utility corridors, and pipelines into our most precious parks and refuges and threatens to have a lasting and devastating impact on America’s Western public lands.