All in the Family
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
Belvon leans back and grins. If he squints just right, the grandkids look just like their moms and pops did 40-or-so years ago, climbing over the hay bales in the barn, waving creepy snake skins at their baby brothers and tossing fried chicken scraps to the dogs. And, watching their parents nurse newborns and wrangle restless toddlers reminds him of the days he and his brother were still working the ranch. The scene, he muses, could be from 1950 — or, he hopes, 2050.
Belvon and Keith, along with their brother Lawrence, their sister Valeen Scovil and all of their children recently entered into a conservation easement with the Trust for Public Lands (TPL) in order to preserve the family’s ranch. The agreement ensures the land will not be subdivided and its primary use will always be agricultural.
Belvon’s daughter, Tonja Hanson, surveys the scene from the porch of an old airplane signal cabin. It was dragged onto the property by her grandparents from a nearby mountaintop and she remembers when it still had numbers painted on the roof. Today the cabin’s porch is laden with baked beans, salads, chicken and brownies in honor of Tonja’s 50th birthday. She says she considered having a party in a less remote location, but in the end, couldn’t imagine a more appropriate spot than her family’s ranch.
“We didn’t go on summer vacations when I was growing up. We worked on the ranch haying, irrigating and vaccinating,” she remembers. These days, Hanson works at The Canyons Resort, but part of her heart is still on the range. “We’d all get on horses and go on the roundup,” she says with a smile and a hint of cowboy twang.
The birthday celebration is a milestone in more ways than one. “Before we started working on this easement, the family was going in a million different directions. We didn’t have reunions. Now we have a common interest, a common goal,” she says. Privately, she admits, dispersing the land any other way could have driven the family apart, as it did when her great grandfather Alfred Blonquist died in 1929.
Alfred had amassed a 9,303-acre ranch, but when he died, there was no will. According to family history, his 14 children and two grandchildren spent much of their lives squabbling over the property. Eventually, some of the kids sold their shares to their brothers and two roughly equal ranches emerged. Hanson’s grandfather George and his wife Ethel bought the upper portion which was later passed on to his children, Belvon, Keith, Lawrence and Valeen. It was Keith and Belvon, though, who kept the ranch running.
But as Belvon and Keith entered their 80s, they reluctantly realized their days in the saddle were numbered. They also knew that the most valuable legacy they had to pass along to their children was the land they and their parents had tended for over 90 years. So, at the urging of Hanson and Keith’s daughter, Anita Lewis, they began to consider ways to preserve the property and protect it from the fate they saw creeping eastward along the Interstate from Park City.
Luckily, Hanson says, a neighbor, Colby Pace, offered to lease the land and buy their cattle. That, she says, gave them some breathing room to examine the alternatives. They looked to an example “up the road a piece.”
When cousin Don Blonquist inherited his Aunt Elsie’s property, he couldn’t afford to pay the inheritance taxes. By entering into a conservation easement, however, the taxes were substantially reduced and he was able to hold onto the property, Hanson explained.
Belvon and Keith immediately saw the potential for keeping both the ranch and the family together, so they enlisted the TPL to help find a solution. “It has been a very interesting two years with a lot of meetings, discussion, crying, fighting and hugging,” says Hanson.
The family formed a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), with each of George’s four children and nine grandchildren as shareholders. They created a stewardship plan and had the property appraised. Based on the existing zoning, Hanson said, the family could have divided the property into about 120 homesites. TPL, however, offered to buy 50 percent of the development rights, and the LLC turned over the other 50 percent. Without the development rights, property taxes were slashed, enabling the shareholders to hold onto the increasingly valuable land.
Hanson says her dad and uncle haven’t looked back. Sitting in a pickup truck by the hay barn one day last summer, waiting to sign the papers, Hanson remembers asking Belvon, “Dad, are you sure you want to do this?” He said, “Absolutely, we’ve already outsourced all of our fuel and food. There is going to be a time when this nation can’t feed itself and wouldn’t it be nice to be part of the solution?”
With a cool breeze starting to slip down into the hollow and guests grabbing their jackets, Keith says, “We thought about it for a while. We had to convince some.” He seems comfortable though, that instead of a check, his kids can look forward to many more summers of picnics, campfires and climbing up to the red rock spires on the ridge. He sums it up this way: “Ranching, well, it is life itself.”
Setting aside his empty dinner plate, Belvon adds, “You could sell [the land], just take the money. But when the money’s gone, it’s gone.” And with a note of pride he reveals, “Everybody that owns ground up the creek here is interested in what we’ve done.”
Rallying her family has turned into a broader mission for Hanson, who serves as the LLC’s chairman. “I want to spread the word. I’m passionate about it. If I can help one family on the eastern side of the county keep their ranch, then maybe they will help the next family.” To that end, Hanson has joined Summit Land Conservancy and has organized a series of meetings with Summit County landowners to explain the benefits of working with conservation organizations.
Hanson notes that her family’s property, though it seems unchanged from the days of the wild frontier, is only 45 minutes away from the center of Park City. “Development will be knocking on the door. In fact, it already is.”
Nan Chalat-Noaker has been covering the news in Summit County since 1977. She has been editor of The Park Record since 1996.
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