Members of the public who used the roads prior to 1976 (in some cases 1966) are urged to offer testimony by contacting local county officials or by emailing publiclands@utah.gov.
Revised Statute 2477 (Section 8 of the Mining Act of 1866) is a federal law that authorized construction of roads across federal public lands. This law helped settle the West for 110 years. Residents of Utah, visitors, pioneers, and settlers created and used thousands of roads across public lands for farming, ranching, hunting, recreating, mining, and connecting communities.
We continue to use many of these routes daily and some occasionally or seasonally. The state will continue to use both the testimony of ranchers and other public user witnesses in future cases. This means, however, that it is even more important for members of the public who used the roads prior to 1976 for hunting, camping, site-seeing and other general public uses come forward with their testimony to assist in the presentation of the evidence in cases involving R.S. 2477 roads.
