Tale of a changing West

Doug Rand is a lucky man.

The 84-year-old Gallatin Gateway resident is a former assistant professor at Montana State University and lives in a home he designed and built himself over more than 50 years.

Rand’s home, a storybook creation with twisting metalwork, multiple interconnected split levels, a whimsical ship’s pilothouse and a working bathtub on top of a lookout tower, is a compilation of scavenged and repurposed materials unfolding like unique chapters in his life.

“When little kids come, they really like it because there are little ladders and balconies and things,” Rand said.

Rand’s luck held when he survived a violent car wreck in 1998. It could be argued that his luck even bounced back when a woman he’d barely met dropped everything and flew to Bozeman to care for him in the aftermath, soon becoming his wife.

Ask him enough questions and Rand will eventually tell you that his 10-acre plot of land just off U.S. Highway 191 with sweeping views of the Spanish Peaks and the Bridger Range was bartered in a trade with a local farmer.

Indeed, Rand swears he traded it fair and square for architectural design work, back when the fields surrounding the highway were used to grow seed potatoes and the land was worth a sliver of what it is today.

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But, after nearly a lifetime of adding on to his fairytale property, it seems Rand’s luck has run out.

That’s because his neighbors — a ranching family named Black that counts its time here in generations — are ready to lease the land to a mining company that plans to dig a 130-acre gravel pit next door. The plan includes digging up and crushing more than six million cubic yards of material over the course of 20 years in exchange for millions of dollars that would flow to the Blacks, a step they say is necessary to sustain the family ranch.

Proponents say the gravel is desperately needed to complete road and construction projects in Gallatin County and Big Sky, a resort community about 40 miles further south on this winding highway. Detractors say it’s just another example of wealthy developers bending the law so they can build vacation homes on the doorstep of Yellowstone.

Rand says there’s no way he could sell the custom home. It’s just not practical, he said, especially with a gravel mining operation kicking up dust on his doorstep.

“It won’t be sellable,” Rand said, “and it won’t be healthy to stay here.”

Belgrade-based TMC Inc. is set to operate the pit, but the company’s management hasn’t broken ground yet due to summer traffic snarls and a looming fight in the courts over the legality of its permit.

The conflict isn’t a new one. Land use spats have been happening in Montana for decades, and the particular issue of the Black’s gravel pit has been in the news for more than a year.

In March, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality signed off on the project’s final permit, spurring a few last-ditch efforts from community members who are fighting to stop the project.

Tracie Gibbons is the president of the Gateway Conservation Alliance and lives in the nearby Hawk Hill neighborhood where almost every home has views of snow-capped mountains, lush river bottoms and what would be a 130-acre gravel pit operating Monday through Friday for the next decade or two.

The gravel road that twists toward her neighborhood is marked by a large plywood sign with an arrow pointing across the highway that reads “Stop This Pit.” A smaller sign reads “No Trespassing. Private Roads.”

Gibbons and a few dozen of her neighbors formed their nonprofit last summer after learning about the proposed mine. Their efforts have led to a series of public meetings, community fundraisers and two legal challenges aimed at stopping the project.

Members also gathered signatures and unsuccessfully petitioned Gallatin County to form a 2,200-acre zoning district to prevent future gravel pits in the area.

“It’s hard to watch people who’ve saved their entire lives and then bought their dream home only to be 20 feet off of a gravel pit that they’re not going to be able to live next to,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons told Montana Free Press that her organization has raised more than $68,000 to spend on legal fees to fight the pit, with some supporters “quietly” paying the organization’s legal tab that has surpassed that amount. Those donating to the GCA include small local businesses but also iconic outdoor brands like Patagonia, Sitka hunting gear and Ted Turner’s namesake foundation.

What’s more, Gibbons said the GCA offered to shepherd the Black family through the process of legally transferring the property to a conservation land trust that would have yielded millions of dollars and protected the land into perpetuity, all without turning a shovel.

“We had donors ready to hand over a very fat check to not have that gravel pit going in because they are diehard environmentalists, particularly around the elk migration,” Gibbons said.

The offer got them nowhere, so Gibbons and the GCA turned to the courts for what could be a lengthy and costly legal battle.

Gibbons said her organization believes the Montana DEQ did not properly investigate the potential for pollution from the mine to leak into the nearby Gallatin River before issuing the permit. She said the DEQ also failed to make environmental review documents available for the public to comment on during the permitting process, which the GCA’s lawyers maintain is illegal.

“Ultimately, the (Montana) Supreme Court will make the decision,” Gibbons said.

House Bill 599, passed in 2021 by the Montana Legislature, muddies the whole situation. According to Helena attorney Kim Wilson, it was intended to cut much of the red tape around permitting gravel mines.

Wilson’s firm, Morrison, Sherwood, Wilson, and Deola, is representing the Gateway Conservation Alliance in two separate lawsuits challenging the permit for the gravel pit. He said the issue comes down to state politics and big money spent on development.

“The Legislature, willingly or unwillingly, or knowingly or unknowingly, has made it virtually impossible for neighbors of gravel mines to have any meaningful participation prior to a decision, and has made it virtually impossible, short of you having a lot of money, to challenge one of these things,” Wilson said.

Describing the legal maneuvering his firm faces as a “procedural morass,” Wilson added that he doesn’t expect to argue the cases in court anytime soon. He predicted the timeline would be measured in years rather than months.

However, a successful legal challenge would shut down the pit immediately, Wilson said, adding that developers would be wise to hedge their bets or risk losing money spent on developing the gravel mine.

“Even if it starts and your court decision is two years down the road, if that decision overturns the permit, then it’s game over for the gravel mine,” Wilson said.

So, in the meantime, does the pit move forward?

Not this year, according to Ken Stoeber, the general manager for TMC Inc., who said the project’s legal woes, combined with a busy summer road construction season, has put the brakes on mining, at least until the spring of 2025.

Stoeber said TMC recognized the neighbors’ concerns and will install industrial water sprayers to reduce dust, build berms to block views and locate its rock crusher as far away from homes as possible to cut noise levels. Most of the measures are voluntary and not required by state law.

As for polluting the nearby Gallatin River, Stoeber said that digging up gravel and sand shouldn’t affect the waterway.

“We don’t use any chemicals to mine with,” Stoeber said. “We’re not mining into the water.”

However, for 43-year-old Bayard Black, who moved from Minnesota to take over the ranch for his cancer-stricken father in 2015, the uncertainty swirling around the project and its continuous legal challenges are starting to wear his patience thin.

Black, who might be found clearing birch trees or irrigating his pasture one day and then spending time on web design or photography projects the next, is not your average Montana rancher.

Black was called back to the state a few years ago to help his father run cattle when he learned of the elder Black’s health issues. He said the decision to move his graphic design business back home and assume the role he was born into was an easy one.

Like his forebears who cared for the land before Montana was even a state, Black said he believes his family must be financially self-reliant, and he bristles at the idea of putting the property into a conservation easement. For Black, that deal would be like taking money he didn’t earn and, he believes, would give too much power to state and local authorities.

“We’ve never in all our years taken government funding,” Black said. “My father and my grandfather were proud of it.”

Instead, Black said he’ll use the 130 acres of land earmarked for the gravel pit as an investment to help pump much-needed cash into his family’s more valuable property, a tract totaling about 2,300 acres that borders the national forest near the mouth of Gallatin Canyon. It’s with this premier property that Black hopes to continue his family’s legacy.

“A tractor costs more than a mortgage,” Black said. “If we’re ever going to invest in the necessary infrastructure improvements this ranch needs, we need the pit.”

Black said the payout from the gravel pit is likely to be more than $15 million over the course of 20 years. His family, though, stands to make a whole lot more if they decide the fight isn’t worth it, he said.

“I’ll sell to the highest bidder in Big Sky,” Black said, adding, “If they zone me, I’m gone.”

And while he’s attended the local community meetings hosted by the Gateway Conservation Alliance and chatted with upset neighbors, Black said he believes they just don’t want to see a big, ugly hole in the ground near what most would agree are trophy homes.

“These are all people who live on gravel roads and drive on a highway,” said Black, alleging that critics of the pit have cloaked their disgust for the mine with that of environmental concern, a concern he believes is dishonest and selfish.

“I have empathy for my neighbors,” Black said. “I have zero empathy for their tactics.”

Asked if he’s ready for a legal war of attrition and years of court battles with the Gateway Conservation Alliance, Black responded: “If that’s their tactic, I’d say ‘Be prepared.’ This isn’t my first rodeo, and I don’t want to see this happen to anyone, including my children.”

For Doug Rand, who said he’s started to view the threat to his home like it’s some kind of terminal disease, the perpetual unknowing is the hardest part. At 84 years old, he wonders if he’ll be forced to move from his home. He wonders, too, what has happened to the community he moved to more than 50 years ago. Politics and money, he said, have changed everything.

“A person shouldn’t be willing to do something just because it’s not illegal,” Rand said. “You know, there has to be more than laws, and there has to be a good-neighbor golden rule: Do unto others.”

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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.