Chalk Creek Ranch

Located in the High Uinta Range in scenic Summit County, Utah, the forests, alpine lakes, beaver ponds, and streams of the 8,890-acre Chalk Creek ranch offer an abundance of wildlife habitat. Snow-covered peaks along its southern boundary and sheer rock cliffs to the north provide a scenic backdrop for the working ranch. But the county is developing rapidly and with rising land values (and taxes) the ranch’s owners were looking for a way to keep the ranch in agriculture and assure that it would never be subdivided.

Working with TPL, the landowners donated a conservation easement worth $8,540,000 to the state of Utah. The easement reduces the value of the land for tax purposes, allowing the owners to keep the land in traditional use. The project was part of the Utah Forest Legacy Program, a joint federal and state program that receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Forest Service.