Officials in Park County, Wyoming, have stopped fighting a California cellphone tower company that sued for permission to build a nearly 200-foot-tall monopole just outside of Yellowstone National Park.
But the Park County Commission won some concessions from Horizon Tower Limited LLC by striking a settlement before dropping its appeal of an earlier federal-court loss Wednesday.
Horizon sued the Park County Commission in March 2023, saying it wanted to put a cellphone tower just outside the park to cure a cellphone-service dead zone, and that federal law allowed the company to do so despite the county’s wishes and protests from local residents.
The federal judge overseeing the case agreed and ordered the county in October to give the tower company permission for the build.
Park County appealed that decision, but on Wednesday dropped the appeal.
Some Concessions
Park County Commission Chair Dossie Overfield told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that the county dropped its case because the federal laws didn’t leave much room for the embattled community to win.
“(This was) the best we were going to do with the situation we were in,” said Overfield. “With the … communication laws, it’s hard to fight them.”
Overfield highlighted some of the concessions the county won in its settlement with Horizon.
Horizon agreed to drop the tower’s proposed height from 195 feet to 175 feet, it will be a monopole, Park County will pick the color, the base will be fenced and there won’t be a light on the top, Overfield said.
And there’s a decommissioning clause in the contract, she added. Meaning, if the tower is not used for cellphone service for 15 months, it will be removed.
“It is possible,” said Overfield about that outcome. “It just depends what technology does, (like) if everything went to satellite or whatever and those weren’t needed. We were just thinking about the future.”
Overfield said she’s not sure what color the county will choose for the tower, probably some earth tone.
The tower was unpopular with most Wapiti-area residents. One petition showed more than 300 landowners against it, or about 65% of the region’s population, according to court documents.
That opposition was “two-fold,” said Overfield. “Some of it is (because it’s) residential and some because it’s a major highway for tourism into the park.”
Long Battle
It’s been a long battle, Overfield said.
Though Horizon didn’t file its lawsuit until March 2023, it first landed its lease with a private landowner in the area Aug. 15, 2022. It applied for a special use permit from Park County on Oct. 17, 2022.
The commission unanimously rejected that permit request Feb. 7, 2023, after hearing from community members, court documents say.
Construction of the tower cannot begin until May, Overfield said, because Horizon is bound to respect the winter-long migration of deer through the area.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
