PLSO The Oregon Surveyor March April 2020

16 The Oregon Surveyor  | Vol. 43, No. 2 federal government in this battle. None- theless, the ejected private parties had accomplished their most essential goal, of obtaining legal support and participa- tion from Shoshone County, which they knew was necessary to facilitate their at- tempt to achieve federal judicial validation of a public right-of-way through federally reserved land, thus they still had a signif- icant stake in the outcome of this case, even after being relegated to the sideline. Among the key issues raised during the litigation over the true title status of the Eagle Creek Trail, which played out be- tween 2009 and 2012, was the relevance of state law, within the scope of any feder- ally conducted QTA litigation. Specifically, Shoshone County pointed out that upon public use for any given period of 5 years, any route of travel such as the one in con- tention legally becomes a public highway under Idaho law. The federal legal team responded by insisting that no state law is capable of controlling the outcome of any QTA litigation, because the Supreme Court of the US has expressly stipulated that all claimants of any land rights which conflict in some manner with any feder - al title interest must utilize only the QTA pathway for title verification purposes, as that federal statute represents their lone congressionally provided opportunity to potentially achieve a successful outcome. On that vital point, the federal judge ad- opted the federal position, stating that “the QTA is the mechanism for the par- ties to resolve their dispute ... the QTA is the sole avenue by which Shoshone Coun- ty can seek to prove the existence of its RS 2477 rights ... the court cannot ignore the QTA in favor of state law.” Upon being so informed, the county personnel came away with the impression that the 5 year public road validation statute, being an element of state law rather than federal law, could be of no assistance to them in federal court during any QTA action. Hav- ing taken that position, after reviewing all of the extensive historical evidence in a highly detailed manner, the judge reject- ed the RS 2477 argument made by the county, finding that the county had failed to prove that the “mountainous passage route” in question was ever used in any genuinely public manner, therefore no RS 2477 right-of-way had ever been le- gitimately established in the contested location. Shoshone County chose to ap- peal that ruling, elevating thematter to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, only to taste defeat once again in 2014, as the appellate panel concurred that the which evidently sparked both public and private interest in that long relatively dor- mant area. In 2009, shortly before the closure of the 12 year window of oppor- tunity provided by the QTA, which had been triggered in 1997 by the aforemen- tioned federal activities, a QTA action was filed in federal court by Shoshone County, in collaboration with an individual and a mining company, seeking a judicial dec- laration that the Eagle Creek Trail had in fact become a public highway, and as such was under county jurisdiction, by virtue of the public use of that route of travel which took place during the 1880s and 1890s. Not surprisingly, the US disagreed, and a federal legal team responded by challeng- ing the validity of the assertion, set forth by the plaintiffs, that the historical use of the trail in contention, prior to inclusion of the land crossed by that route in a fed- eral reservation in 1906, was substantial enough to support the formation of a genuine public right-of-way, within the pa- rameters of RS 2477. In addition, the US charged that both the individual and the corporation, on whose behalf the coun- ty had acted, were unqualified to serve as plaintiffs in this particular QTA litiga - tion, because even if the route at issue was in fact a valid public corridor of trav- el prior to 1906, as maintained by each of the 3 plaintiffs, title to the RS 2477 right-of-way was held solely by the coun- ty, and not by any private party or entity, therefore only Shoshone County was a legitimate plaintiff in this instance. The federal judge agreed with the US on that latter point, concurring that only the coun- ty was qualified to make an RS 2477 case in the QTA forum, and both of the private plaintiffs were removed from the action for that reason, leaving only the legal rep- resentatives of the county to take on the Information about the status of the area that now comprises T50N, R6E, Boise Meridian, during the late 1880s, supplied by GLO surveyor G. R. Trask, who conducted numerous mineral surveys in some of the most remote portions of what is now the Idaho Panhandle, prior to the arrival of Idaho statehood, and long before that region was subdivided and platted by the GLO, when presented along with other vital historical evidence by federal attorneys well over 120 years later, convinced a federal judge that Nineteenth Century use of the Eagle Creek Trail was never sufficient to support the development of an RS 2477 right-of-way connecting the extinct mining camp once known as Eagle City to Belknap, Montana, about 20 miles to the east. Featured Article