Some people think controversial developer Tom Chapman
may have made a costly mistake. The Colorado native recently
acquired two patented mining claims within the Spanish Peaks
wilderness study area in southwestern Colorado, but his critics say
the price he paid for 30 acres was high and the potential for
mining or other development low.
“This is some of
the most useless real estate around,” says Mark Pearson, vice
president of the Wilderness Land Trust, a Colorado nonprofit
organization that acquires private holdings inside public lands.
Pearson says he thinks the claims are worth about $15,000 – Chapman
paid $101,000 – and would be easy to exclude if Congress designated
the area wilderness.
Access to the Bull’s Eye and
Whale claims is also anything but easy. “It’s not even a given that
he can build a road,” says Forest Service staffer David Crumley.
The claims lie on unstable, almost vertical terrain and “(Chapman)
may have a very expensive pile of rocks surrounded by a wilderness
area,” adds Pearson.
Chapman has become well
known for buying private holdings surrounded by public land, then
threatening to develop unless bought out at an inflated
price.
Environmentalists in Eagle County, Colo.,
hope that Chapman may have miscalculated there as well. He was
recently involved with the purchase of a 26.8-acre gold mine in the
Holy Cross Wilderness, near Vail. Now he faces the county’s
backcountry zoning rules, which were created to restrict private
development.
* Jamie
Murray
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline What’s his are mines.
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