Aug 12, 2007 - 04:04:06 CDT
Bismarck Tribune
By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN
The newest public land in North Dakota will be showcased next month and citizens will have a chance to talk about how they want to use it.
The 5,200-acre Eberts ranch, purchased over the last year by the U.S. Forest Service, will be dedicated at a program in Medora Sept. 15, with ranch tours in the morning and a formal program in the afternoon.
Edmund Morris, noted Roosevelt author, will be the keynote speaker.
The dedication has been scheduled to tie in with the second annual Theodore Roosevelt symposium at Dickinson State University on Sept. 13-15.
The link between the ranch and Roosevelt dates back to the 1880s, when Roosevelt set himself up in the cattle business and lived in a small log cabin on the Little Missouri River, across and slightly downriver from the Eberts property.
The Forest Service purchased the ranch to preserve the Roosevelt history, after attempts by the Eberts family to sell it for preservation first to the National Park Service and then to North Dakota failed at political and financial levels.
Word has been that the September dedication will occasion a White House-level appearance. The latest rumored possibilities are either Vice President Dick Cheney or first lady Laura Bush.
Sherri Schwenke, acting Forest Service supervisor, said the possibility has been talked about, but not recently. It may be quiet for security reasons, she said.
The Forest Service will use the same time frame to invite the public to talk about how they'd like the 5,200 acres to be utilized.
Schwenke said the agency will hold open houses in Medora, Dickinson and Bismarck during the week of the Theodore Roosevelt symposium to ask the public what it knows about the ranch history and resources and how it would like to see the property used.
The ranch is diverse, with cattle grazing, oil development, crop farming and irrigation.
It will remain a working cattle and oil property, open for public hunting and other uses, like all grasslands holdings. The public will not get a pristine wilderness experience, like it does at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
The Forest Service is inventorying the property to get a handle on what is where and the condition of water wells, riparian areas and buildings, Schwenke said.
The property contains the Eberts' ranch headquarters, with the house and shed buildings, as well as a second house, currently occupied by a ranch family that has a lease on the cattle allotments through 2009.
Schwenke said a second round of public meetings will be held later in the fall as part of the agency's requirement to go through the environmental process.
The agency will first propose how it plans to manage the former Eberts ranch and eventually release those plans in draft and final form.
Another topic that may be open for discussion is what to actually call the place.
The Forest Service has been calling it the Elkhorn Ranch, but Schwenke said the National Park Service is worried about confusion with its own Elkhorn Ranch site, where Roosevelt's cabin was located.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)
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