Idaho developer proposes swapping land
BOISE – Timber tycoon and luxury resort developer Tim Blixseth is offering to trade 100,000 acres he owns in Idaho, including a historic campground on the Lewis and Clark Trail, for state or federal land he can develop near McCall and New Meadows.
The lands Blixseth wants to obtain have not yet been identified. Besides portions of the Lewis and Clark Trail, he is also offering 12 miles of canyon of the North Fork of the Payette River along Highway 55, and 10,000 acres inhabited by the endangered northern Idaho ground squirrel.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Blixseth. “Two generations from now no one is going to know my name, but the animals will use the habitat and the people will have the land.”
Blixseth has just started talks with U.S. Forest Service officials about the trade, which might need to go through Congress as it includes portions of two national forests.
The 55-year-old Blixseth is ranked by Forbes magazine as the 645th richest person in the world with a net worth of $1.2 billion. He recently dropped off the magazine’s list of the top 400 richest Americans.
He made a fortune buying timberland in the 1970s, but went bankrupt in 1981. In 1988 he started Crown Pacific with a partner, then sold his share in 1990 and bought private land in the Gallatin National Forest in Montana.
He traded some of that land – important elk, grizzly bear and bighorn sheep habitat north of Yellowstone National Park – for public land he turned into the 21-square-mile Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont. Lots there sell for a minimum $1 million an acre and prospective members must prove they’re worth at least $3 million.
Some of the Idaho land Blixseth now wants to trade includes areas visited by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, such as the so-called “13-Mile Camp” on the Lolo Trail that’s documented in historical accounts. Other parts of the trail that Blixseth might trade are mixed into the Clearwater National Forest in a checkerboard pattern.
“The idea of turning it into public land is fabulous,” said Kimberly Nelson, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman in Orofino.
Blixseth owns about 217,000 acres in Idaho, about half of which he is willing to trade. But finding public land to trade it for could be difficult.
“For every acre out there there’s someone that cares about it,” said Dick Smith, Boise National Forest supervisor.
In McCall, Mary Hart said she’s not sure trading nearby public land is in the community’s best interest.
“What we have here in Idaho is so precious,” said Hart, a former Valley County planning commission member and now a McCall school board member. “I don’t think we have the same interests at all.”
But Tamarack and other developers are transforming the region into a resort area. Blixseth said growth is going to happen, and it makes sense to protect special areas while developing others.
“If you are going to have growth, why not be sure to put it where you want?” Blixseth said.