For years — since the days of former District 3 Supervisor Chip Davis — Yavapai County officials have been trying to exchange some land in Cottonwood and Cornville with the U.S. Forest Service.
Realizing that the process of going through Forest Service bureaucracy could take years, District 2 Supervisor Tom Thurman contacted U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar [R-District 4] last year, hoping that getting a bill passed through Congress could be easier.
On March 12, President Donald Trump signed the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation Management and Recreation Act, a large omnibus bill creating five new national monuments, protecting 1.3 million acres of wilderness and permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The 698-page bill includes numerous specific provisions relating to public lands around the country, including the Cottonwood Land Exchange Act, fulfilling the goals of Yavapai County leaders.
“How good can it get?” current District 3 Supervis-or Randy Garrison, who had been pushing for the bill along with Thurman, said after it passed. “It’s nice to see the government work for you.”
The act allows the county to take control of a parcel of USFS land that abuts Windmill Park in Cornville, which they hope to use to expand the park and other public recreation sites. In exchange, the county intends to give control of some mostly empty land in Cottonwood to the Forest Service. The county land includes numerous specimens of cliff rose, an endangered cactus that county leaders believe the Forest Service would be better able to protect.
In addition to Gosar, the Cottonwood Land Exchange was taken up as a bipartisan goal by much of Arizona’s Congressional delegation. Both Republican U.S. Sen. Martha McSally and Democratic U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema cosponsored legislation in the Senate — where the bill passed on Feb. 12 — and U.S. Rep. Tom O’Halleran [D-District 1] joined Rep. Gosar in the House — where the bill passed Feb. 26.
“It feels really good, and I hope that people like Supervisors Thurman and Garrison and Sen. McSally also feel really happy, because this is common sense,” Gosar said. “You see the people of Cottonwood benefiting, especially if they like parks and having a place close to home to get out and be in the sunshine and be outdoors. And, if you’re about endangered species and consolidation of the checkerboard, this also helps the forest by looking at the endangered species like this [cliff rose] cactus. I think this is a win-win situation.”
Gosar attended the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
Though the bill authorizes the land transfer, it is still not the end of the process for giving the county control. The land in question must still go through a National Environmental Policy Act review to decide any historical or archaeological significance, as well as look for specimens of endangered species in addition to the cliff rose. Thurman said he hopes that process can be finished within a year and a half.
“Once all of that NEPA process is done, then we can look at building a small parking lot above to have a circle hiking trail that will be interpretive,” Thurman said. “We’ll also have to get approval by the board of supervisors to put in a cantilevered walking bridge from Windmill Park connected to the bridge that crosses Oak Creek and goes into the other portion of the 80 acres. And this is paramount to use both sides safely.”
Thurman said he hopes to connect new trails on the land soon to be controlled by the county with already-extant trails in the area and said that Windmill Park could soon be “the most beautiful park in Yavapai County.”
