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

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

Roger Hill hiked across federally managed public land to enter the river, donned his straw hat, and cast his dry-fly line along that privately owned stretch last weekend without incident. This week, he urged other anglers statewide to replicate his civil disobedience and assert a 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 this same stretch of the Arkansas River, just upriver from the 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. A retired physicist from Colorado Springs, Hill filed a lawsuit claiming a public right to wade on riverbeds — and won — until landowners, with support from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. High court judges in June 2023 dismissed Hill’s case, ruling that he lacked legal standing to proactively sue to establish a public right to wade in streams and rivers.

The ruling means Hill cannot advance his legal case unless he can raise the public access issue as a defense.

He had notified the Fremont County sheriff before he went fishing last Saturday, assuming an arrest or ticket for trespassing would give him the legal standing the state Supreme Court has required to have the core of his case heard.

“I didn’t catch a single fish and I’m pissed off that I wasn’t arrested,” Hill said. “Somebody’s got to do it…. Strength in numbers would help.”

“He needs to stop or suffer the consequences,” said James Gibson, an owner of property where Hill fished. “If he’s not breaking the law, there’s nothing to be done. I hope this gets settled.”

Fremont County Sheriff’s Cpl. Caleb Chase said the county would leave any enforcement to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, part of the state government. At CPW, a spokesman said the agency oversees fish but lacks jurisdiction over water and land adjacent to Colorado’s streams and rivers.

Colorado’s AG Weiser declined to comment.

Colorado authorities allow private ownership of riverbeds while other states, including Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada, treat rivers deemed “navigable” at statehood as public. But recreational activities, including fishing and whitewater rafting, increasingly play a primary role in the state’s economy and strain Colorado’s position as an outlier. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states hold ownership of navigable riverbeds in trust for the public. Public access has become a vexing issue as wealthy landowners purchase more property along the West’s mountain streams and rivers.

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

“Roger Hill is a hero,” said Holmstrom, who has helped lobby for an intervention by Gov. Jared Polis to designate public-access waterways. The increasing buy-ups of riverside property in the West “makes it a fight for the public interest versus those wealthy landowners who are fighting against the public interest,” he said. “These are public pathways 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 has helped represent Hill, said the state Supreme Court dismissal over legal standing misinterpreted well-established principles. “You don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way in order to test your legal rights.” He has criticized state leaders for siding with riverside landowners.

“People should exercise their right to use the beds of navigable streams,” Squillace said. “Unless we can get somebody arrested or ticketed, or something, we don’t have a way to get into court.”