Rural property holders, a handful of bar owners, offroad recreationalists and the Jefferson County Commission — these are the parties trying to sort through a only-in-Montana tiff over the ownership and maintenance of a small but strategic bit of roadway.
The road in question is Heide (or Heidi, as it appears on some maps and signs) Way, a winding dirt track that runs along the west side of Interstate 15. It has long served as something of a back route from Jefferson City to Boulder, garnering use from residents, commuters, and recreationalists alike.
Jefferson County has long operated under the assumption that Heide was a public road under county jurisdiction. Earlier this year, however, it decided that the roadway is actually privately owned. That new classification has created tension with and amongst Heide Way residents, raising concerns over shouldering private maintenance for a road that is still widely used (and worn) by the public.
Some context: The particular section of road in question is a 1.8-mile stretch beginning at the intersection with Amazon Road and running to the top of Boulder Hill. From there, it turns into a non-maintained state frontage road for about a mile, before eventually becoming South Main Street leading to Jefferson City, under State Highway jurisdiction.
Tom Roffe, a retired wildlife veterinarian, purchased land off Heide Way in the year 2000. When he moved to the property in 2013, Roffe recalls discovering the road in a rougher state than he had anticipated. “I get there and find that the county is just doing nothing to maintain this road,” he recalled.
At a May, 2016 meeting, the Jefferson County Commission entered into a verbal agreement with Roffe to assume maintenance of Heide Way. The county installed tube counters to measure traffic, and agreed to grade the roadway annually, and to plow snow as needed in conjunction with nearby Amazon Road.
The road was maintained by the county without incident for seven years. But in spring of this year, maintenance ceased. It turned out that Mike “Bear” Taylor, supervisor of the county’s roads department, had been researching old county roads and related information when he discovered that Heide Way was not public, after all.
“Roads used to not be named the same way they are today, everything was much more description-based,” Taylor explained. “We found minutes from a 1930s commission meeting describing a road matching Heide Way, indicating that it had been abandoned. In the county records, this road is the only one in the vicinity; it leads us to believe that there are no county roads across this land, and that Heide is not a county roadway at all.”
Additionally, Taylor said that the county has been unable to find any record of the road — despite its public use — being documented as a public right of way.
Commission Chair Cory Kirsch says the county would like to see Heide Way public. Very much not “abandoned” anymore, “it’s a useful road for [the] county. We hated to see it go private; for one thing, there now are plenty of people living on it, and it’s a valuable alternative to I-15,” citing the 2018 wash-out of an I-15 culvert, when traffic was diverted to Heide Way. But Kirsch said the county can’t take on the liability of maintaining a road it doesn’t own, and that the county cannot simply pick and choose which private roads to maintain.
The county’s position didn’t land well, and residents are not convinced. “Regardless of documentation, that is a public throughway. You can have a whole discussion about how the absence of data is not the same as having data that proves the opposite point,” Roffe said. “That’s the issue, they’ll say you need that legally documented, and if it isn’t — and there isn’t great documentation for a lot of things like this — they’ll wash their hands.”
A series of exchanges between landowners and the County Commission over the summer and fall of 2023 led to a Sept. 19 meeting attended by nearly 30 Heide Way residents.
The meeting, which grew heated at times, saw discussion of many now-familiar sore points, questions and confusions, raising concerns of transparency, communication, obligation — albeit with little resolution.
Residents argued that the county has been collecting state fuel tax funding for Heide Way for years, which by law qualifies it as a throughway for public use. Taylor said the county is no longer receiving funding for the roadway and that the correction will be reflected in the newest iteration of the state fuel tax map.
Additionally, some residents believe the high volume of non-resident traffic utilizing Heide Way, as documented in an April 2016 traffic study, is evidence that the road has an established history as — and need for — classification as a maintained public throughway. Taylor argues the issue is more complicated: Even if the volume of traffic did warrant a high-maintenance classification, he said, “the county’s hands are tied if the road isn’t even ours to touch. We don’t have the legal right to maintain a private road.”
At the Sept. 19 meeting, the Commission proposed a solution: It could maintain Heide Way, it said, if property owners agreed to provide easements that would ensure the county a 30-foot right of way on either side of the road. There is an existing easement noted on the title of each landowner — however, as according to County Clerk and Recorder Ginger Kunz, these easements are not currently public, the wording on the deeds must be changed for Heide Way to function as public throughway. All landowners would need to come to a unanimous agreement to pursue this option.
That seems to be where “we’re stuck,” as Kirsch said recently. In the meantime, Heide Way residents TJ and Sarah Eyers, apparently with approval from neighbors, purchased and installed 200 feet of cable across the roadway in an attempt to bar non-resident thru traffic.
This installation quickly caught the attention of a group of local businesses that often host utility task vehicle (UTV) gatherings utilizing this alternative Jefferson City route for “poker runs”, side-by-side rides and other sponsored events.
According to Taylor, he was contacted by Rusty Giulio (Boulder’s mayor and owner of The Windsor Bar, among other area properties) in hopes of restoring access to Heide Way. Upon learning of the newly reclassified private nature of the roadway, Giulio, with fellow business owners Bruce Giulio (Mad Dog Pizza), Dave Schell (Dave’s 32 oz) and Angel Molyneaux(T’ings Tavern), reached out to Heide Way residents in hopes of finding a solution for restoring access.
According to a letter to The Monitor written by Schell, the group spoke with landowners, agreeing to do whatever it took to maintain the road [in exchange for public access]. Following purported agreement, the road was graded by Bruce Giulio, and the cable was removed.
While many residents seemed pleased with the arrangement — with Roffe praising the work as some of the best the roadway has seen during his time as a resident — it appears some on Heide Way were unaware that an agreement had been reached at all. Schell’s letter prompted more debate on the road’s ownership and fate, leaving the path forward no less contentious than before. “By trying to do a good thing it sounds like I’ve done a bad thing to all the residents on Hiedi [sic] Way,” Schell wrote in a second letter.
“I think the bar owners’ solution is a testament to the power of a community to come together, that’s fantastic,” Taylor said. “ [The residents] can hire anyone they’d like and enter into any agreement that works for them. However, it is a good idea to go through the process of making it a public right of way — it makes it so the county can help out, and also eliminates any confusion if in, say, 5 or 10 years a new resident doesn’t like the private deal anymore.”
Taylor continues to believe that converting Heide Way to a public road via easements is the best path forward. “It would require some paper and survey work, but the county is willing to take on the costs and filing,” he said. “This is really the option that seems to solve the problem — if everyone can just get on the same page to make it happen.”
