• Trout Creek Road — 6.7 miles — has been used by campers, prospectors, and county residents since the 1870s. Prior to 1976, bulldozers, heavy equipment and hand labor were used to maintain the road.

The state is asking a federal judge to allow it to continue to maintain the roads and in some areas even widen the road to two lanes to allow easy passing of vehicles. It is also asking the court to allow added improvements to ditches, shoulders, culverts and road signs in accord with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Offices.

Don Banks, BLM spokesman in Salt Lake City, was not able to comment on pending litigation. But he could discuss why the agency had ordered the closures.

"These roads have been closed since 1987," he said. "Closures were enacted through our land-use planning process, an open, transparent process."

The routes cut deep into the Deep Creek Wilderness Study. The closures are generally where the real roads end "and trails pushing into the WSA begin," Banks said.

"The closures were enacted to protect wilderness study areas, including spectacularly beautiful areas such as Scott's Basin."

Banks said Scott's Basin was purchased by the Nature Conservancy and given to the BLM for protection.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance filed a motion Thursday to intervene in the Emery County suit, said SUWA attorney Steve Bloch. He said SUWA will want to get involved in the Juab County action, too.

"These routes lead into the heart of the Deep Creek Mountains, into a wilderness study area," Bloch said. "It's another distressing example of the state attempting to wield this repealed statute as a sword against wilderness protection."

By "this repealed statute" he meant RS2477, the federal law under which counties originally claimed road rights of way across BLM land. The law was repealed in 1976 when the Federal Land Policy and Management Act was passed, but state officials say RS2477 claims dating to before 1976 were grandfathered into the later law.

Bloch charged the Attorney General's office has "run amok" and said the environmental group also is disappointed by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

"This is not the type of balanced land-use management that the governor has said would be his hallmark," he said. "Instead, we're seeing legal maneuvers like these that are clearly intended to defeat wilderness protection."

Assistant Attorney Gen. Edward Ogilvie said the state is convinced that the routes qualify under the RS2477 claims. That means they "properly belong to the state of Utah and to Juab County," he said.

"Because of that reason, they should not be closed."

Jaysen Oldroyd, also an assistant attorney general, said he and others from the office visited the region near the Juab County roads met with many of the residents. All were interested in keeping the routes open, he said.

"The older people we talked with used these roads when they were growing up." Now the routes are closed and the older people would like them open again so they can revisit those areas.

The roads are useful for camping, ranching and for irrigation purposes, he said.

Edward said the roads do not extend onto wilderness. By definition, a wilderness area has to be roadless.

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E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com; bau@desnews.com