There’s long been gripes about recreationalists being locked out of the popular Boswell Road in southeastern Wyoming’s Snowy Range as the result of a prolonged argument whether the road is private or public.
But an elk hunter had the opposite problem — getting locked in.
Austin Kissell said it happened to him twice.
The second time was during a late-fall snowstorm, and he had to abandon his camper trailer and nearly trashed his pickup driving out on a little-known back way.
It was more than two weeks before he could get back up to his camper.
“I had pack rats in there. The mice got into it too, and it took so much snow on the roof, that the roof cracked and leaked onto the bed when it melted,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
Kissell said his experiences are another example of the problems caused by the U.S. Forest Service and Albany County being unable to resolve who actually controls the road and whether it should be open to the public.
As he sees it, the matter of ownership over the road needs to be settled, and it should be open to recreationalists, property owners, ranchers and others who depend on it.
The situation “is not going to take care of itself,” he said.
Road Jurisdiction Undecided
Kissell lives in Laporte, Colorado, near the Wyoming-Colorado state line. He said his family for decades have used Boswell Road to access national forest land on both sides of the state line.
They’ve always taken for granted being able to use the road to get into the woods for ATV riding, hunting, camping, fishing and other outdoor activities.
His family is hardly alone in that regard.
Boswell Road dates back to a wagon route established in the 1870s.
It’s about 10.75 miles long and runs east-west from the Boswell Ranch south of Jelm, Wyoming, to Mountain Home. Two sections cross into Colorado before coming back into Wyoming, and 2.5 miles of the road crosses four parcels of private land.
A few years ago, confusion arose over whether the road is actually controlled by the Forest Service or Albany County. The two entities had long shared responsibility for maintaining it.
The Albany County Commission in 2023 passed a resolution denying any official claim to the road. And the Forest Service has stated that it doesn’t consider Boswell part of its official road system either.
With the jurisdiction in doubt, the Albany County sheriff has for at least the past two years sent out alerts that Boswell Road is actually private, and the public isn’t allowed to use it.
That hasn’t stopped numerous people from using it, however.
Some landowners have installed gates across the road. They’ve frequently remained unlocked for people to pass through, but sometimes are locked, as Kissell found out.
ATV Ride Ends Badly
Kissell said the first instance was last summer when he and his then-pregnant fiancée went out for an ATV ride.
He said he’s on good terms with a landowner at one end of the road, and although that landowner was away at the time, his gate was unlocked when they passed through on their way in.
But at the end of day, they reached the gate and found it locked.
“The clouds up there were practically black right then, there was a big storm coming in,” Kissell said.
Unable to reach the landowner and feeling out of options, he cut the lock.
Kissell said a Forest Service law enforcement ranger was waiting for them where they had parked their truck and ATV trailer near the highway.
The ranger let them off with a warning. But both the ranger, and later the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, warned Kissell that if he ever cut a lock on a gate again, he could face trespassing charges and possibly jail time.
Another Trip, Another Storm
Kissell said he and some hunting companions returned in November to hunt elk on the Colorado side of the national forest, as they had been doing for years.
They set up his camper and went about hunting.
But then an early season snowstorm hit and got steadily worse. They decided it would be best to leave before they got snowed in.
The trip down the snowy, slick road was dicey, to say the least.
Once again, they came to the gate and found it locked.
“I wasn’t going to cut that lock again and risk going to jail,” Kissell said.
“I had to back my camper up, quite a long way, to even get to a place where I could turn it around and take it back up to our campsite,” he said.
The only way out was through a rough Forest Service road that connects to the King’s Canyon Road on the Colorado side, he said. And with the snow piling up, getting the camper out that way would be impossible.
So they left it, chained up all four tires on the pickup and drove out at a crawling pace.
“I bumped my truck up pretty good,” he said.
When he returned and found the damage that rodents and snow had inflicted on his camper, he wasn’t happy. Kissell figured there wasn’t anything he could do except pull it back home and repair it as best he could.
“We ended up selling that camper,” Kissell said.
‘I Don’t Think It’s Fair’
Kissell said that his second round of bad luck on Boswell Road was enough. He hasn’t tried accessing it from the highway since.
He still comes in the back way, sometimes using the road they used to connect to the King’s Canyon Road during the ill-fated hunting trip.
“I had to do a lot of chainsaw work to clear that road of fallen timber,” he said.
The Boswell Road is still the best option for numerous Wyomingites and Coloradans seeking leisure and adventure on the national forest, he said.
So, for the public’s sake, officials need to clear up jurisdictional control over the road and reopen it, Kissell said.
“There’s a lot of public land back there, and I don’t think it’s fair that it’s shut down for people trying to get back there,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
