Five-year fight with Army brings community closer

The plywood signs are faded and weathered now, but the sentiment remains. Every few miles along lonely stretches of Highway 160, Highway 350 and Highway 109, the flaking paint advertises that “This land is not for sale to the U.S. Army.” In the grasslands of southeast Colorado, where cattle far outnumber people and neighbors are often 30 miles apart, the five-year-old fight with the Army is holding the community together. “We ain’t going to quit,” said Aguilar rancher Stan White, noting that not even World War II brought the region together like the battle to block expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Driven by pride, property and paranoia, the Piñon Canyon uprising has created one of the most powerful political forces in this part of the state, even as the Army retreats from expansion. Since 2006, a few hundred ranchers and agricultural families in this region of southeast Colorado have stopped the Army effort to add land to its 235,000 acre training site dead in its tracks. The Army wanted the land to train the increasing number of troops at Fort Carson in the tactics used on far-flung battlefields, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army brass argued that new weapons and new training methods demanded a vast increase in acreage. Congress has passed laws to block money for expansion. The state General Assembly banned the use of state land for expansion. The Army is now waving a white flag. Top officers say expansion is off the table for the foreseeable future. The Army’s long-term budget has no provision for adding the land and efforts to find sellers willing to entertain an Army offer have stopped. But in Trinidad, Kim, Rocky Ford and La Junta, locals want more. They want the military to promise, in writing, that they’ll never again seek land for the training site...more