For now, there's only one road for driving around the newest public land in North Dakota.

The U.S. Forest Service, which completed its purchase of the 5,200-acre Eberts Ranch north of Medora last month, has closed off all but the main Billings County road until further notice.

A series of other scoria roads, mainly to service oil wells on the ranch land, will be posted prohibiting motorized travel.

Access on those roads and the ranch acres by foot, bicycle and horse and for permitted uses like grazing and oil service, will be allowed.

Forest Service supervisor Dave Pieper said the restrictions are for public safety and to protect the area.

The restrictions will remain in place until the Forest Service develops a plan to manage the ranch. It plans to hold public meetings to get citizen ideas for using the property, which consists of Badlands pasture acreage, the Eberts ranch headquarters buildings and frontage along the Little Missouri River. The ranch is crossed by the agency's popular Maah Daah Hey Trail.

Pieper said the newly acquired land will be managed like other lands in the Little Missouri National Grasslands into which the Eberts Ranch has been folded.

Cattle leasing, hunting, public enjoyment and oil development will be part of the standard multi-use management the agency has in place for the grasslands.

The Eberts family sold the land to preserve it from ranchette-style development because it is downriver and across from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park's Elkhorn Ranch Site, where Roosevelt based his cattle operation in the 1880s.

If you have questions or would like more information, contact Babete Anderson, 250-4443.