A Colorado fisherman is fighting for the freedom to wade in the state’s rivers

An 83-year-old Colorado fisherman has revived his 12-year fight for the public’s freedom to wade in the state’s rivers, seeking arrest and risking conflict with landowners by returning to a controversial bend in the Arkansas River.

Roger Hill walked across federally managed public land to get into the river, put on his straw hat and cast his dry fly line along that private stretch of land without incident last weekend. This week, he urged other fishermen across the state to repeat his civil disobedience and demand the public right to fish and float on navigable rivers — a freedom established in other Western states.

It’s the latest twist in a fight that began in the summer of 2012 on the same stretch of the Arkansas River, just upstream of its confluence with Texas Creek near Cotopaxi. A landowner threw baseball-sized rocks at Hill, forcing him to leave. A few years later, her husband fired shots at Hill’s friend. Hill, a retired physicist from Colorado Springs, filed a lawsuit claiming the public right to wade across riverbeds — and won — until landowners, with support from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, appealed to the Supreme Court of Colorado. Supreme Court justices dismissed Hill’s case in June 2023, ruling that he had no legal standing to proactively file a lawsuit to establish a public right to wade in streams and rivers.

The ruling means Hill cannot advance his lawsuit unless he can raise the issue of public access in his defense.

He had the Fremont County Sheriff before going fishing last Saturday, assuming an arrest or trespassing ticket would give him state legal status Supreme Court has demanded that the core of his case be addressed.

“I didn’t catch a single fish and I’m angry I wasn’t arrested,” Hill said. “Someone has to do it…. Strength in numbers would help.”

“He has to stop or he will face the consequences,” said James Gibson, an owner of the property where Hill fished. ‘If he doesn’t break the law, nothing can be done. I hope this gets sorted out.”

Fremont County Sheriff’s Cpl. Caleb Chase said the province would leave any enforcement to police Colorado parks and wildlifepart of the state government. At CPW, a spokesperson said the agency oversees fish but has no jurisdiction over water and land adjacent to Colorado’s streams and rivers.

AG Weiser of Colorado declined to comment.

Colorado authorities allow private ownership of riverbeds, while other states, including Montana, New Mexico and Nevada, consider rivers deemed “navigable” as a state as public. But recreational activities, including fishing and whitewater rafting, are increasingly coming into play main role in the state’s economy and putting pressure on Colorado’s position as an outlier. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states have vested public ownership of navigable riverbeds. Public access has become a vexing issue as wealthy landowners increasingly purchase land along the West’s mountain streams and rivers.

This time, Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Fishermen co-chairman Don Holmstrom joined Hill in fishing along the Arkansas, where trappers and railroad companies in the 1870s used the river for commercial purposes: transporting pelts and tens of thousands of railroad ties.

“Roger Hill is a hero,” said Holmstrom, who helped lobby for an intervention by Gov. Jared Polis to designate publicly accessible waterways. The increasing buyouts of riverfront property in the West “makes it a battle for the common good versus the wealthy landowners fighting against the common good,” he said. “These are public trails throughout the state that people should be able to enjoy – to fish, float and run the whitewater. ”

University of Colorado law professor Mark Squillace, who helped represent Hill, said the Supreme Court’s dismissal on legal standing was a misinterpretation of principles. “You don’t have to put yourself in danger to test your legal rights.” He has criticized state leaders for siding with riverfront landowners.

“People should exercise their right to use the bottom of navigable rivers,” Squillace said. “Unless we can get someone arrested or get a ticket or something, we have no way to get to court.”