Mormons Seek Parcel of Public Land

A bill in Congress, opposed by conservationists and history buffs, would allow the Mormon Church to buy a chunk of historic public land beside four pioneer trails southwest of Casper, Wyo.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wants to buy a 1,640-acre site known as Martin’s Cove, where at least 56 Mormon immigrants died in a blizzard in 1856.

But conservationists worry that the U.S. Department of the Interior would set a dangerous precedent by selling the land to a religious group without a guarantee of public access or assurances that the area’s secular history will be honored.

The site, which also contains Native American artifacts and campsites of pioneers who traveled the nearby Oregon, California and Mormon trails, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department division that manages the site under a land-use plan that preserves the area, is opposed to the sale. The bureau has turned down previous offers to swap the parcel with the church, which could not find a site of equal historic value to exchange, according to agency officials.

Higher-level officials at the Interior Department, however, recently overruled the BLM’s stand and backed the sale, although it asked that the sale be limited to the smallest amount of land necessary and that easements be included to ensure public access and prevent development.

“The department recognizes the unique significance of Martin’s Cove to the church and understands and supports the intent of this proposed legislation to enable the church to manage the site’s historic resources,” Kit Kimball, the department’s director of external and intergovernmental affairs, testified during a field hearing two weeks ago.

“It’s about stewardship,” said Interior spokesman John Wright. “We believe over the years the church has been a good steward.”

“We don’t see a reason for it. The church could accomplish what it wants with a long-term lease with the BLM,” said Randy Wagner, national president of the Oregon-California Trail Assn. “I don’t know what the gain is if they own it. They already control access. They own all the private land around it.”

The church says it would allow access to any members of the public, though church officials have declined to talk about plans for the site. The church oversees the site under BLM supervision and built a public-access path from an adjacent ranch it bought five years ago.

“There’s not a whole lot that we would do differently there, because most of what’s been done there [by BLM] now has been done on our recommendation,” said Lloyd Larsen, LDS stake president for Riverton, Wyo. “The concern is, will we always be able to do that? History has shown from administration to administration and Congress to Congress, public land policy has changed.”

Rep. James V. Hansen (R-Utah), chairman of the House Resources Committee and a Mormon, introduced the Martin’s Cove bill and will conduct hearings on it in Washington on Thursday. Six other Mormon congressional members, none of whom are from Wyoming, are co-sponsoring the bill.

“There’s nothing nefarious going on,” said Hansen spokeswoman Marnie Funk, who added that she sees no conflict of interest in the congressman’s effort on behalf of his church. The church, she added, is “very open about it and willing to accommodate the concerns of local residents.”

The Department of the Interior has returned public lands to tribes that have expressed religious concerns over the parcels, and recent law allows federally owned lighthouses listed on the National Historic Register to be sold to preservation groups, Funk noted.

Several tribes are closely watching the proposed sale, in hopes that other publicly held areas of religious significance to them--Devil’s Tower in northeastern Wyoming among them--may one day be returned to them.

Already, trail enthusiasts complain that the ranch adjacent to Martin’s Cove, which the church converted to a public visitors’ center, focuses on the Mormon emigration while giving short shrift to the history of other trails.

The site memorializes 150 to 200 poorly equipped British converts, led by Capt. Edward Martin, who died while pushing handcarts to Utah when an early snowfall hit Wyoming’s high plains in 1856. The emigrants, at least 56 of whom died, found refuge in a small niche in the Granite Mountains that bears Martin’s name.