Hello and welcome to Summit in Six, from the communication and public engagement team for Summit County, Utah. Let’s kick things off and get caught up!
In this episode, we’ll take a deep dive into some recent land acquisitions by the county. We’re pleased to welcome our guest, Jess Kirby, director of the lands and Natural Resources Department.
Jess, the county has recently closed on two major purchases involving historic ranches combined. The acquisitions have brought more than 9,000 acres under public ownership. Can you tell me a little bit about why the county would be interested in purchasing land like this?
Thanks for that question. I’m glad to be here. We’re incredibly lucky in Summit County to have a county council and a county government that really supports conservation and land acquisitions. Our county council has as one of their objectives to put lands like this under conservation, and then, with the support from our community, we’ve been fortunate enough to have bond funds that allow us to do that work.
When you put it like that, it makes perfect sense. We want to get into some specifics here. So we’ll start with the larger of the two acquisitions, the 910 Ranch, located along both sides of East Canyon Road between Jeremy Ranch and East Canyon reservoir. The 910 contains almost 8,600 acres of pristine forest land and vital wildlife habitat. What can you share about the 910’s history and prior management?
The ranch has a very long history. Really exciting things have happened out there — starting way back with with the indigenous people. We have found some significant artifacts on the property. So we do know that we had significant use of the property from our Native American populations, which is exciting. And then fast forward into when settlement started happening in Utah, and in the 1890s the Jeremy family was the first owner of the land. They ran a sheep operation out there on almost 38,000 acres — a very big swath of land.
As they sold off different pieces, part of that land is now Jeremy Ranch the neighborhood and then the elementary school there. That acquisition happened in about the 70s, and then the current landowner took over in the late 1980s–early 1990s and has been the sole owner of the property ever since.
Why did the county want to acquire and protect the 910 Ranch specifically, and where did the funds come from?
This is a really unique property for Summit County. It’s one of the last large contiguous pieces of land that we have in the western part of our county. By contiguous, we mean a large swath of land with one owner. It provide incredible wildlife habitat connections to other protected lands and forested lands owned by the forestry and state lands offices. There’s a state park right next to it, and there’s other forest legacy parcels that are really near it, so it creates this large swath of protected land.
The funding, first and foremost, came from our community. The OSAC bond, which is the Open Space Bond that we passed in 2021, was a $50 million bond. It passed with over 70% support from our community. So we got a big thumbs up to go and do projects like this. So that $15 million as our first down payment came from the bond, and then I was tasked with finding the rest. The whole purchase was $55 million, so we had a $40 million deficit. Luckily, at that moment, we had an opportunity to go for a Forest Legacy Grant that allowed us to fill that gap, and we applied and were awarded those funds in 2023.
Fantastic! I’m sure every acquisition is a little bit different, but I know we’ll be hearing more about that Open Space Bond again, when we discuss the Ure Ranch next. Before we move on, can you share what’s next for the 910?
A lot of planning. For right now, it’s status quo. We’re keeping the land pretty much private. We’re not opening up, we’re not cutting the ribbon, and we’re trying to take our time and be very thoughtful about management and how we open up the property to the public.
Like I said, it’s been in one landowner’s hands for a very long time. It’s kind of a wilderness area out there. It hasn’t had a lot of human interaction. There’s lots of wildlife. So we want to be very mindful about how we open that up, though we’ve been spending the last year or two doing some very overarching baseline assessments and conservation easement writing. We’ve done a forest health plan. We’ve worked on the watershed plans. We have a grazing plan. And so now we’re going to take all these plans, put them together, and put an overarching management plan together for the property, which is going to include some recreation.
We’ve done several open houses and several surveys with the community, but we do hope to still engage with the community on the recreation plan coming forward. Some stakeholder meetings will be coming up here in the near future, then work session with council, and then we’ll adopt those final plans and make a plan for cutting that ribbon here soon.
Going back in time just a few weeks, and traveling across the county towards the southeast: the Ure Ranch was formally acquired by Summit County in December 2025. This transferred 835 acres, split between five distinct parcels, into county ownership and kickstarted the process of placing each parcel under a conservation easement.
As you enter the Kamas Valley on the east side, driving along State Route 248, you’d pass the Ure Ranch with most of the total area on the south side of 248. Who gave this ranch its iconic name, and what can you tell us about the ranch’s history?
The Ure Ranch is named for the Ure family: a historic family in the Kamas Valley. They’ve been there since 1892, so 130 years this family has been on the property. They’ve run a dairy farm, different cattle operations over the years, and there were sheep there for a small minute. But that entire time it’s been ranched by that family and handed down through the family over those years.
We definitely want to express our sincere gratitude to the Ure family for entrusting their legacy to Summit County and working alongside us towards this conservation goal. With that in mind, what natural resources and features can we protect now that the property is in public hands, and what changes might the public see in the coming years?
So first and foremost, I think the protection of this ranch was important for us to preserve the rural quality of eastern Summit County, to keep agriculture on the land, and to keep producers on the land. So really protecting that use of the property — the historic use of the property — but also the watershed. These ranches are flood irrigated. They have great connection to the amount of water that gets into the Weber River, which then passes all the way down to the Great Salt Lake. And the Kamas Meadow is just a great big sponge. If you take that water out of the sponge, it dries up. So we really want to keep the water on the land.
We want to keep the land in working hands, and protect that habitat, that resource. I think people forget about the fact that agricultural lands really serve as spaces for migrating birds like the cranes that come through every year. They nest out in those fields. They use those open spaces. It’s also winter habitat for mule deer and elk, and we have sage grouse populations out there as well. So I think there’s a lot of habitat that we’re protecting.
We’re protecting a lot of heritage. There is Native American culture that we found on the property as well relics of tipi rings and different flakes that we found out there. And so we want to preserve that history as well and keep that green space open in our valleys.
Are there any partners we can shout out that help make this acquisition happen?
Yeah, absolutely! We couldn’t have done this without the partners that we have. Summit Lands Conservancy, first and foremost, they’ve been at the table with us from day one. Bringing in different federal grants — they did some application and we did some applications. Summit Lands worked on that North Meadows piece.
We also received funding from the State of Utah’s Outdoor Recreation Initiative and the state’s Land and Water Conservation funds. So we had a lot of different funding streams that went in this to create that layer cake of funding that was needed to purchase this property.
Just because I think the public would like to know, how much did the total purchase price end up being?
$25 million was the final purchase price on the Ure Ranch.
Thank you so much for giving such great background on these two historic properties and sharing a glimpse of their respective futures. Before we end, what’s the status of the Open Space Bond? Is there any funding left to acquire more conservation easements or properties?
So with really great excitement, we’d like to announce that we have preserved almost 16,000 acres with the bond funds so far, and we do have money left! We’ve been really successful at leveraging those dollars.
So with the funds that we have left, we are putting a shout out to the community. If you have land that you would like in conservation, or if you have neighbors that have land, reach out to us. Fill out an NOI, which is a notice of intent, that can be found on our website. That just gives us an idea of your property, and we can evaluate that. Yes we do have funding left over, and we do hope to get that back into more conservation lands.
Whether you’re a land owner or just a local resident, how can one get involved with these conservation projects or maybe weigh in on future land acquisitions?
We do have a formal board that helps determine the qualifications for funding, and that’s our OSAC board. We just recently onboarded three new members, so those opportunities come about every couple of years. Keep your eyes out if you are interested in being part of our formal board.
Otherwise, you know, always can reach out to us via email or phone call, but if you’re just curious about the properties, please sign up for our newsletter. There’s a link on the lands page that you can get information.
We’ll have different stakeholder meetings and public engagement opportunities to weigh in on the final management plans for both the 910 and the Ure Ranch, and we always have just different events that are going to be held. Right now, we are only holding those events on the 910 Ranch. The Ure Ranch is currently being leased back to the Ure family for another year, so it technically is still in their hands for one more year. But into the future, we’ll have events on that property. We do different kind of walks — birding hikes and education and vegetation walks — so can always engage with the Natural Resources Department with those things.
Perfect! We’ll have links to all those pages as well as a way to sign up for the newsletter in our show notes. I just want to say thank you again, Jess, for joining the podcast. Best of luck in 2026 we hope to have you back with more good news in the future.
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