It has highlighted how decades of compounding errors in city planning have created so much dysfunction that one rogue landowner has been able to seize–and, for years, successfully hold–control over more land than any other individual in the Municipality of Anchorage. The fight for the Stewart Trail is about more than a gate. In a 2018 phone call, one exhausted legislator described the situation as an “emotional shitshow.” The battle for the Stewart Trail has spilled over into a bitter civil war on the Rabbit Creek Community Council, into heated Anchorage Assembly meetings, onto talk radio and into cryptic op-eds published by the ADN. Over the subsequent years, Pugh’s gate has withstood repeated demands from the Municipality to tear it down, the ire and defiance of his neighbors, and the early stages of a lawsuit. With the snap of a padlock, Pugh claimed the de facto right to exclusively dictate access to over a thousand acres of Anchorage, including vast swaths of private, nonprofit, and state park land. The man with the acetylene torch was Frank Pugh, and soon his gate was complete. And I’m closing it.’ You know he might have said, ‘It’s my land.’” I thought it was a public road.’ And he said ‘No, it’s private. And I said ‘Wow, cause I’ve been walking up here since the late 70s or early 80s. My interaction with him was really short, I walked up to him and said ‘what’s going on?’ and he said ‘I’m building a gate’ or something. “He had a welding setup there and a bunch of metal… a bunch of rebar and plates, and an acetylene tank. The hiker described the encounter as follows: A hiker and his small dog arrived at the entrance to the Stewart Trail to find a man busily expanding an existing vehicle gate with rebar and barbed wire. Though the area was beloved by many it remained something of a hidden gem, a place where those in the know could slip away from city life into the peaceful wildness of the Chugach foothills.īut in the summer of 2015, everything changed. When it snowed, locals groomed nordic tracks onto the Stewart Trail and taught their children to ski. Families walked dogs, jogged, berry-picked and ambled into the tundra for panoramic views of the city and the mountains beyond. In winter its unobstructed western face rises up to catch the sunset, glowing a brilliant ruby red long after the big Hillside homes on its lower slopes have slipped into night.Īnchorage residents recreated below Ruby for decades, accessing Chugach State Park on an old homestead road called the Stewart Trail. Rising above the Potter Valley neighborhood on the southeast corner of Chugach State Park, its summit and the ridges below it have a graceful symmetry uncommon in the Chugach Mountains. Anyone familiar with the peak would find that name fitting. The mountain goes unnamed on current maps and hikers simply refer to it as “East McHugh,” but 1979 USGS maps briefly gave it its own name: Ruby.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |