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| Bundy walks by a First Amdt Area set up by BLM |
The tour starts with a ranch breakfast in the house Cliven Bundy’s father built in the Virgin Valley in the 1950s.
There are fresh eggs, potatoes, milk straight from the cow, and fry bread with homegrown pomegranate jelly. The main course is beef, of course.
“I have a great history here,” Bundy says Tuesday from his kitchen table, a wall of family photos at his back.
Outside the windows and beyond his property line, roads in the Gold Butte area have been closed as federal authorities make final preparations for the long, tense weeks ahead.
If Bundy hopes to stop a federal roundup of his cattle from public land 80 miles north of Las Vegas, he’s running out of time. At the moment, Bundy’s efforts to stop the roundup involve setting up media interviews, rallying his supporters, making calls to state and local officials and taking calls from worried friends and relatives. His house is filled with the sound of ringing phones.
For the next few hours, he will leave the phones to his wife and grown children so he can show the Review-Journal around.
The first stop is in the nearby town of Bunkerville, where BLM has set up one of two “First Amendment areas,” dirt pens with orange plastic fencing to contain protesters. The second pen sits next to Interstate 15 at the Riverside exit, its professionally printed signs providing the ideal backdrop for all the interviews Bundy is ready to give about how the federal government is ignoring the Constitution. What he has come to believe is that the federal government has no ownership rights to or management authority over public lands in Nevada. He talks a lot about “states’ rights” and “sovereignty,” words that fueled the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion and other fights for control of huge expanses of Nevada and the West.
The courts have ruled against him and his views repeatedly, but he is undeterred.
Bundy says he has received countless messages of support from as far away as South Dakota. He says he has people standing at the ready to stage protests at various locations as his cattle are collected, inspected and possibly moved out of state to be sold.
He also has plenty of family to back him up — 14 children and 52 grandchildren, with three more on the way. Not far from the second First Amendment area, the Bundys stop to look at what they’re calling BLM’s “compound” at a highway materials yard southwest of Mesquite. Through binoculars from a hill along I-15, they point out corrals, stacks of hay bales, portable lights and mobile communication towers. Rangers with binoculars stare back at them.
Bundy says he wouldn’t be surprised if there were government snipers with their rifles trained on his house right now. He says federal law enforcement officers are itching to kill or incarcerate him. “They’re only there for one person, and that’s me,” he says. The tour ends at Whitney Pocket, one of Gold Butte’s most popular recreation spots. There, a group of law enforcement officers in vehicles with flashing lights are turning back traffic.
An apologetic BLM ranger called in from Arizona for the roundup operation says he doesn’t know how long the road will be closed and can’t offer an alternate route. As he talks, his partner walks around the back of the Jeep with the Bundys and the two journalists in it.
The mood quickly changes when the Review-Journal photographer steps out with his camera. The ranger from Arizona now says the entire area is closed, including the road we just drove in on unobstructed.
As he explains this, an unmarked SUV races over and skids to a stop a short distance behind the BLM cruiser. The two uniformed men inside crack open their doors but don’t get out...
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