DICKINSON - A family that wants to sell its historic and beautiful Badlands ranch for public use says a move by Billings County to build a road across their property is a disguised attempt to thwart that sale.

The Eberts family has been trying for four years to sell about 5,000 acres to the national and state park services, saying the ranch land has a historic connection to the Theodore Roosevelt Elkhorn Ranch site just across the Little Missouri River.

No deal with either the National Park Service or the state of North Dakota is final yet, and the Eberts say that Billings County's action may make any sale more difficult, if not impossible.

The family was served a notice in August that the county plans to take the Eberts' private road through a process that lets the county acquire it and settle damages later.

The family got more time to pursue their legal options Monday. At a hearing in Dickinson, Southwest District Judge Ron Hilden continued a temporary restraining order against the county while other court action proceeds.

The restraining order means the county can't survey the Eberts' land to find the best place to cross the Little Missouri River.

Outside the courtroom afterward, brothers Ken, Allan and Dennis Eberts said they were glad for the breathing room.

The county wants to build an east-west road through the Badlands north of Medora to connect main Highways 16 and 85 on either side.

The Eberts said that the four miles of road the county wants to take on their land is a private road and has been for decades, though they let emergency and utility vehicles cross the river. They used to let others go through until too many calves and brood cows were killed and maimed by vehicles.

Ken Eberts, one of three brothers with ownership in the land, said Billings County is publicly opposed to the land becoming a park extension or preserve of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and running a road through the land is a way of making it less attractive.

"I'll make this accusation - they're interfering in the sale of private property," Ken Eberts said. "They're doing this to stop the sale."

Jim Arthaud, a Billings County Commission until last month and the county's representative in the matter, said the county has been working toward a river crossing much longer than the Eberts have been trying to sell their land and has invested millions in engineering studies and environmental assessments.

Arthaud said Billings and Golden Valley counties have been trying to connect at the river for a long time. A trip down to the only public bridge on I-94 is about 80 miles around.

"This is the last link in our county," Arthaud told Hilden in court.

Outside the courtroom, Arthaud said the Eberts' property is in the most logical corridor for a crossing to occur, but the family won't meet to talk about where the best site for a crossing would be.

As it is, the private road the county plans to take goes right past the ranch buildings. If it becomes the transportation link Arthaud is promoting for oil and other uses, it could be fairly heavily trafficked.

"It's got to go through somebody's ranch," Arthaud said. "We're not trying to mess up the deal, we're trying to make sure there's a road up there."

The Eberts say they don't believe theirs is the only road that would work, or that the timing to take their private road is any coincidence. Ken Eberts said he wonders if the county will meddle in every sale that happens if it's not to their liking.

The Eberts say the county's action only makes them more committed to the idea of preserving for public use land that a late president ran cattle on and admired from the porch of his cozy log cabin.

Arthaud said the county needs an east-west transportation link to fuel commerce and that if the timing looks bad, it's only because he's been on the commission two years and the link is one of his priorities.

He pressed for the quick take resolution shortly before he resigned because he is not living in the district he represents. He'll try for a commission post from his residential district in November.

He said the county recently experienced the largest oil and gas lease sale in its history.

"It's a natural place to have a crossing with the least impact on the land," Arthaud said.

The Eberts first offered their ranch to the National Park Service to be owned in conjunction with Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Because of protests like Billings County's, the national park offered to buy the land as a preserve so that oil and gas and other uses could continue. The state of North Dakota has also stepped into the fray, offering to buy the land through the State Park Department.

The Eberts said each entity would buy about half of the land under present discussions.