Booted from National Forest, threatened with $5,000 fine; no mask
I’m surprisingly not upset at the fact that my husband and I were irrationally and ridiculously threatened with a fine and kicked out of a National Forest the other day — I say this was a bullshit turned into a blessing — as I sit here on a different piece of BLM land (Bureau of Land Management, public land) typing away with beautiful red rock outside my window… It’s like we got the best of both worlds — getting booted from snow capped mountains and a private stream setting only to be sent wandering aimlessly around hairpin turns and 11,000 ft mountain passes to find red rocks, a nicer town and land we’d be welcomed on.
Our new land — the land the welcomed us with open arms and no over-authoritative Sheriffs to run us out.
Silverton, Colorado will not be seeing our outside dollars flow into their tiny and struggling economy anytime soon — possibly ever, after the sour taste Sheriff Bruce Conrad left with us the other day.
On Sunday, May 24, my husband and I — and a handful of other dispersed campers — were forcibly told to leave the San Juan National Forest just outside Silverton, Colorado, with zero warning whatsoever! This was an overreach of power during these, what some might say, not-so-precedented, though wildly overblown COVID times (I’ll leave that opinion up to the reader). Sheriff, however, will say he was protecting his community — a community that’s had 1 COVID case and 0 deaths. I don’t disagree that he may be trying to protect his community, but the thing is — we were in a National Forest — surrounded by hundreds of acres and only 9 other people within sight (image below)… do the math. I think we’ll check out okay on the social distancing calculator.
At approximately 5:15pm, Bruce Conrad, San Juan County Sheriff, drove his dusty Ram into the dispersed camping area of Forest Service Road 679 just off Hwy 550 about 6 miles north of Silverton, Colorado. The Sheriff had a message, “You guys aren’t allowed to be here. You need to pack up and leave or you’ll be faced with a $5,000 fine!”, but no clear reason.
“You guys aren’t allowed to be here. You need to pack up and leave or you’ll be faced with a $5,000 fine!”
Three days (and nearly 75 hours) after our arrival to these grounds, Sheriff decides to descend upon us and the rest of our unsuspecting, innocent — and law abiding — fellow campers.
My husband spent hours — many hours — the week before researching Colorado, reading websites and reviews and looking up dispersed campgrounds to ensure we’d land in a place where we’d be safe — and legal. Here on the San Juan National Forest website, it states clearly that ‘dispersed camping, hiking and river use is allowed’.
Sheriff Bruce didn’t agree as he argumentatively said, “I don’t know what their site says, but San Juan National Forest covers a lot of land and right now you’re on a county road and you’re not allowed here.” We had no internet at this camp, so no way to prove this to him.
Sheriff Bruce went on to express his concerns about us not wearing masks — in the middle of a forest — and that our camper could ‘draw attention’ and he couldn’t have his EMT’s stressed if 35 campers showed up, got drunk, and started fights … up to this point, there had been a max of 11 people spread out on the approximately 6 immediate acres over the course of 3+ days.
““You guys aren’t even wearing masks [in the middle of a forest].””
If you’ve never driven a 50 ft long, 8,000 pound truck and trailer, let me tell you what WILL stress our your EMTs — a vehicle going over a cliff in the San Juans.
Sheriff Bruce put us in a very dangerous position that night. As my husband pleaded with him to let us leave by early the next morning, out of concern for driving unknown hairpin turns and high cliff (11,000+ ft) roads with no guard rails at dusk, Sheriff said, “If you don’t leave, I’ll be back with a court date and a fine.” My husband and I both wish we would have accepted his challenge that night. We didn’t.
Instead, we frantically pulled our frazzled selves together and prayed we did all our safety checks before departure. A tear down and hook up that would normally take a couple hours, we did in about 30 minutes — this isn’t normal and it’s not safe.
After the jack slipped, causing our trailer to slide and our hitch lock to bend we were on our way…for about 300 feet until Josh realized our trailer breaks weren’t working…and you don’t descend mountain passes with failed trailer breaks. We found the issue a few minutes later, still frazzled and still feeling unsafe. We prayed again.
Video Notes/Corrections:
1) This video is not edited. My app missed some of the recording when I flipped the camera from front to back.
2) This is not BLM land. It’s National Forest land.
3) *1.8 million acres
Come Monday, I just wasn’t having it. I KNEW in my heart and gut, Sheriff overstepped his bounds of authority. I had to dig in.
I started by pulling the San Juan National Forest borders map up. Pinpointed below, our camp is well within the boundaries of the National Forest.
A few minutes later I went on to find my Golden Nugget — where, stated ON the San Juan County Website — “…dispersed camping, hiking and river uses are allowed, although discouraged.” This statement dated April 7, 2020 is in complete contradiction to what Sheriff Bruce said when he argued, “…and right now you’re on a county road and you’re not allowed here.”
So, this begs the question — why did Sheriff Bruce threaten and kick out approximately 11 people camping, all social distancing, each minding their own business, respecting the land and the law — out of a National Forest? Why does he think he has the authority to do so? Why is he getting away with it? And what will be done about it?
In an article from the Durango Herald dated May 12, 2020, Sheriff was quoted “…these folks need to be charged seriously,” referring to people who had been previously caught tearing down the ‘road closed sign’ and traveling that closed road by car (on FSR 585 shown in below image). I say, in response to our situation, “the Sheriff needs to be held accountable for his actions, false accusations, and attempted stress he put on his EMTs and threat to our safety.”
““The Sheriff needs to be held accountable for his actions, false accusations, and attempted stress he put on his EMTs and threat to our safety.””
Other Facts:
YES: One road leading to established and dispersed camping in the area was closed off. This was Forest Service Road 585 / County Road 7.
NO: The road we were dispersed camping on was NOT blocked off and showed no signs of ever being blocked off. There was no established camping on this road — the difference between the [closed] road mentioned above and our road.
FSR 585 WAS blocked off. This is NOT where we were camped.
FSR 679 & 820 were NOT blocked off and there were no signs of blockage and no visits from the Sheriff for over three days.
YES: There were multiple cars every day going up and down our long Forest Service Road which branches off and turns into FS Roads 819 / 820 / 630.
YES: We were on this land for nearly 3 days (75 hours) before being unexpectedly booted.
YES: This is OUR HOME — the camper, to be exact — is our home. All of our earthy processions are cramped up in that 215 sq ft camper. We weren’t joy-riding the parks for a Memorial getaway. Just as every other American has been ‘distancing’ in their sticks-and-bricks homes, we have been distancing in our camper. And as you can see in the photo above, we were able to maintain extreme social distancing from others. The camper parked next to us are people we’ve been traveling with for a while — they’re practically family.
YES: We asked if we could leave the next morning, for safety reasons.
NO: Was the answer.
YES: We had enough food and water in our camper to survive the 1-week we were to be on the land, thus eliminating the need to visit the grocery store in town.
YES: Like it or not, agree with it or not, it is a Constitutional Right under “The Privileges and Immunities Clause” (Article IV, Section 2 Clause 1) that the rights of US citizens are protected against discriminatory treatment under the law of a different state to be in this state, despite being residents of another state.
YES: Per the 10th Amendment, “Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” So sure, if Sheriff Bruce wanted to prevent outsiders from entering his TOWN, he probably has that right. But if you refer to the National Forest boundaries map above, you will see we were not booted from the town — we were booted from public, NATIONAL lands.
YES: The car across the street from us was there because he had a broken ball joint — thus, a broken car unable to drive down a mountain. He didn’t have the time to mention this to the Sheriff before the Sheriff walked off on him. This man was going to HITCHHIKE 25 miles, at dusk, in cold weather with minimal traffic passing by — that is an unreal expectation and sorry state to put a law-abiding human in to. This man had enough food for a few days, as he was going to be panning for gold up in the mountains before his car broke down. On Tuesday, he was going to walk 6 miles to Silverton to gain cell service, to call his friend to bring a flatbed. Tuesday never came. Josh and I took this man to Ouray on Sunday evening so he didn’t have to hitchhike in the cold or face a fine.
PS - this man was a LOCAL. He was from the area and simply got stranded because his car broke on Memorial Day weekend!
YES: To reiterate, the Sheriff put us in a dangerous position — one that could have required the assistance of HIS EMTs — by asking us to frantically move our 8,000 pound trailer down an unknown mountain pass at dusk. We had no cell service, we had no new destination to go to. He sent us wandering.
The Sheriff has been quoted saying, “I will say, though, if you have yet to realize we are in unprecedented times, then you are either not paying attention or are a denier.” As cliche and overused as this ‘unprecedented times’ verbiage may be, what’s really happened is that the Sheriff has taken it into his own hands to take on unprecedented powers.
And if the Sheriff can use these unprecedented powers on ‘outsiders’, what’s to keep him or other Sheriffs from using unprecedented (and unconstitutional) powers against his own people? Silverton, that means you.
To any RVers, Van Lifers, Boondockers out there reading this — travel responsibly, travel respectfully. Do your research (especially in times of uncertainty) and screenshot your findings (on National, State and local levels)! Stand your ground in times of challenge — when you know you’re in the right — and don’t be afraid to speak up when someone oversteps their boundaries.
Sheriff Bruce was doing what he thought was his job — he was not unfriendly, but we do not appreciate how he handled things.
My goal with this report is twofold:
To ensure Sheriff Bruce understands the risks he put us at and the wrongdoing and mistreatment he delivered to us and our fellow human campers; to let him know that while he may think he’s helping his community, he’s hurting it in some collateral ways; and to let him know he picked the wrong girl to boot.
To raise awareness about the RVing community — especially those who call the road their full-time home. During this time of COVID many private, public, state and national campgrounds have closed leaving a fair percentage of the one-million full-timers without a safe place to sleep. Camping and RVing is one of the best ways to social distance AND boost immunity.
Yours in the fight for our right, to enjoy nature as God and the National Forest Service intended,
