Morgan County may use eminent domain to take over a popular Weber River rafting takeout

Morgan • A young man stood in the middle of the frigid Weber River, the sun bouncing off his blond hair and a satisfied grin stretched across his face. He wore Stars and Stripes swim trunks and a red life jacket. Beside him, he held tightly to the red inner tube that had just carried him on the current from Henefer, six miles upriver, to this scenic spot near the enclave of Taggart.

In a few steps, the young man would be out of the water and safely onto an embankment leading to an old highway lined on both sides with parked cars. There he would be absorbed into the mass of swimsuit-and-sandal-clad bodies of at least a hundred other Fourth of July revelers socializing on the narrow bank after finishing their own holiday river float.

Those few steps were perilous, though. Likely unbeknownst to the man — unless he happened to catch sight of a 12-foot-long banner strapped above a sun-faded classic red Mercury Comet convertible parked several hundred yards away — he would be walking right through what is currently one of Morgan County’s prickliest right-of-way disputes. More circuitous than the river itself, the fight over the mostly unusable riverbed swath has entailed publicity stunts, piles of public records requests and the threat of eminent domain.

“Why this is really important to all property owners in Utah is not just because there’s a river there,” said Kent Singleton, who owns the land on the south side of the river, and some of that underneath it. “This is: If the [attorney general’s] office can steal your house that you live in, let me help him find a way.”

In other words, Singleton believes that if the county can seize his property via eminent domain just to protect the rafting takeout, they can take anyone’s.

A tradition for thousands

Rafting and tubing down the Weber River has become a right of passage in Utah.

During what is known as the “100 days of float,” the river ushers hundreds of people per day through East Canyon. On weekend days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the number of floaters approaches a thousand — so many that the Division of Wildlife Resources this summer started charging for parking at the public put-in near Henefer.

And on holidays like the Fourth of July? Tubes come down so often they look like a chain of polypeptides.

Sometimes the floaters go on their own. Other times, they’re shepherded through by a guide from one of at least five outfitters who have permits for the river. Either way, they nearly always take out at along the same quarter mile of Morgan County property. Most hang on through “Taggart Falls” — a class II-III rapid — before exiting at a rare place where the north bank slopes gently up from the Weber River to a section of the old Lincoln Highway. The highway sees little use since Interstate 84 was built alongside it except for this small strand, which all summer is lined with white outfitter vans hitched to raft trailers and SUVs with kayaks strapped on top.

Dylan Taggart frequently visits the enclave his ancestors founded in the 1930s to care for a family home. He often marvels at how popular the takeout has become. And at how little Morgan County has done to capitalize on it.

“For a long time, Morgan just had an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude about it,” Taggart said. “I think they thought that river sports was going to go away. And it’s quite the opposite.”

Ideally, Taggart said, the rafters and tubers would be able to continue to Morgan (pop. 4,455), where they would find restaurants, a coffee shop and other services to spend their money on. While economically beneficial to the county, it would add roughly another four miles to the trip, though, almost doubling it. Plus, that stretch is currently blocked by a series of diversion dams.

So, they stop in Taggart.

“It’s right off the freeway, and just after that last rapid. It’s kind of like the only ideal spot for people to get out safely,” said Robby Hamblin, who recently bought the Barefoot Tubing and Park City Rafting operations. “Further downstream, the river is not nearly as safe as the upper part and then just access to the river down there is extremely limited because of all the private property,

“We wouldn’t be able to access [the riverbank] and take care of our guests without the Taggart stop.”

Singleton, who purchased the property in 2020, calls that stop “my driveway.”

Indeed, on the other side of the river from the takeout sits a green metal gate, its bottom rung nearly submerged. It opens onto a grassy meadow surrounded by trees. Beyond the meadow rises a sheer cliff with a railroad track cutting through it. The railroad holds one of six easements on the property. Others are held by petroleum and fiber optics companies whose pipelines crisscross Singleton’s land.

None of those easements, Singleton said, are held by rafters.

The public has the right to float down a “navigable” river (a term some with knowledge of Singleton’s troubles say doesn’t fit that section of the Weber River). Yet, last fall the Utah Supreme Court upheld a law disallowing floaters from stepping on the river bed if it is private property. An exception is made in emergency situations.

So, Singleton can’t understand why, when a young man sloshes across his land — even if it’s at the bottom of a riverbed — Morgan County sheriff’s deputies won’t arrest him for trespassing. He’s posted numerous “No Trespassing” signs, some typically blunt and others more creative. One offers permission to be on his land to anyone who emails him asking for it. He said in three years, he’s gotten six emails. None have come from outfitters.

At times, he’s also taken a more assertive approach. He’s put up cameras and sent footage of trespassing and other illicit activity to the sheriff. He’s issued fake trespassing citations. At one point, he put fenceposts in the river to try to keep people off his land.

“He had fenceposts in the way, driven into the river bottom,” Taggart said. “And I got after Morgan about that, and I said, ‘You can’t do that. Landowners cannot intentionally put river users at risk that way, by putting things in the river.’ And I think that was one of the things that really pushed Morgan [County] to this idea of eminent domain.”

Fear of getting sued

Contrary to how it may look, Singleton says he doesn’t actually take issue with the rafters and tubers using his property. What primarily compels him in this fight, he said, is concern about his liability. If someone gets hurt on his property, could he get sued?

For nearly 30 years, tubers, rafters, paddleboarders and kayakers have been using the embankment at Taggart as their takeout without issue. That started to change when Fred Singleton (whom Kent Singleton later discovered is one of his distant cousins) sold the property in 2019. The asking price on the MLS listing for the 6 acres was $12,000, and Kent Singleton was the buyer’s agent.

That initial buyer quickly grew frustrated with Morgan County, however, for its refusal to let him build a bridge across the river nor approve development and business permits. He told Singleton to sell the land. When no buyer immediately appeared, Singleton bought it.

Singleton has said he would like to develop the area in a way that would cater to rafters. He has floated the idea of building picnic tables, a concession stand and even hot tubs on the east side of the Weber River.

Citing zoning laws and the property’s location in a flood plain on the far side of a waterway however, the county has continued to deny his permit requests. Singleton has not petitioned the county to change the zoning, according to Morgan County Attorney Garrett Smith.

“We’re not preventing [him] from using the property as it is right now,” Smith said. “The river, I think, is preventing [him] from using the property with more access.”

While challenging the county’s decisions on one front, Singleton began addressing his liability concerns on another. As a form of resolution, he said he sent a certified letter to the rafting companies asking them to indemnify him on their insurance policies. If they weren’t willing to do that, he said, he would accept a negotiable payment of $999.99 per month during the rafting season for permission to use his land.

In part due to that letter, Spencer Byrne, a part-owner of All Season Adventures, said outfitters last year began to gird themselves for a legal battle over access to the takeout. They believe their access is granted through a prescriptive easement.

A prescriptive easement basically grandfathers in access to private property, even without the landowner’s consent. According to Utah law, it can be applied if an area has been used continuously for 20 or more years and allows for “enjoyment of the property.” Hamblin said his Park City Rafters, the oldest outfitter on the Weber, has been taking its rafts out at Taggart for close to 30 years.

The outfitters backed off, Byrne said, after the county told them the matter was settled.

“We were essentially informed by the county that this was a resolved matter,” he said, “and that legal recourse could essentially just inflame something that was a nonissue.”

To Singleton, though, the issue is far from settled. He has requested hundreds of pages of public records pertaining to the property, including emails and official documents he had been copied on. He also continues to put up cameras and signs and alert the sheriff’s department to trespassers on his property, including in the river.

Still, the county refuses to arrest tubers and rafters for trespassing.

“Each commercial Outfitter can make $10,000 a day on my property because government entities say they can,” Singleton wrote in a text, “but I cannot.”

Smith said the issue is the murky standing of Singleton’s property. To issue a citation, the sheriff’s department needs to be able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Because of the specter of a prescriptive easement at the takeout, he said, the county likely could not meet that burden of proof.

“It’s really hard for the county to enforce something where we don’t know who has what ownership or property interest or prescriptive easement,” Smith said.

He added that if a judge determined no prescriptive easement exists, the county would begin enforcing trespassing on Singleton’s property. However, to get to that point, he said, it is likely either Singleton would have to sue the outfitters or the outfitters would have to sue Singleton.

“I’ll be the first to say that if the judge determines they don’t have a prescriptive right,” Smith said, “then we would enforce it.”

In the meantime, the situation has become so contentious that Morgan County is exploring other options. One of those is taking Singleton’s property via eminent domain.

$60,000 or $6 million?

The 12-foot banner above Singleton’s red convertible Mercury Comet is held in place with triangular steel beams mounted to the trunk and hood. It reads: “Why I just received a notice of eminent domain 2x could be a movie!”

It’s not quite that dramatic.

Smith said he believes the county’s hand is being forced by Singleton’s actions, including harassing floaters and putting fence posts in the river. Those actions, he said, are a danger to the public, a liability for Singleton and a bad look for the county.

“When you refuse to engage with the county in any productive way; when you’re continually wasting resources that are paid for by our residents; …and when you refuse to file an application with the planning department to be able to use your property the way you intend,” Smith said, “then I guess I lose my patience with trying to find other alternatives.

“So, eminent domain wasn’t the knee-jerk reaction.”

On June 4, the Morgan County Commission sent a letter to Singleton alerting him that at its June 18 meeting the commission planned to vote on whether to seize his riverfront property. The letter was signed by vice chair Blaine Fackrell. Two days before the meeting, however, the commission removed the vote from its agenda.

A couple of days later, on June 20, the county offered to purchase the property. The appraisal and offer price were redacted in an offer letter The Tribune obtained via an open-records request. However, Singleton said the offer price was $60,000.

That was considerably less than the $6 million cash offer Singleton asked for when he listed the 5.84 acres in August 2023. The listing, which eventually expired, indicates that sewer, gas and power are not currently available on the property. It also can only be accessed by fording the river.

In the letter, Smith indicated the county’s offer was generous toward Singleton.

“The County is offering an amount above the appraisal amount,” he wrote, “as it recognizes the efforts you have made in trying to sell the property without success, the frustrations you have encountered in attempting to find a profitable use of the property, the alleged damages to personal property you have claimed occurred, and the ongoing conflicts you have had with rafters and others utilizing the public areas abutting your property.”

Smith told The Tribune the county was seeking to take the entire 5.84 acres. Taking just the riverfront and submerged property, he said, would not be fair to Singleton because it would cut off access to the rest of the land. He added in his offer letter that the county doesn’t intend to profit from the land.

“Rather,” he wrote, “the purchase of the property is to solve both your problem of not being able to sell or utilize the property and to ensure the health, welfare, and safety of the public utilizing a public water way and public take-out area across from your property.”

Singleton has not responded to the offer.

“I think $60,000 for 2 tax identification numbers is insulting,” he wrote in a text, “don’t you?”

On June 25, Smith and Fackrell met with Singleton and several others with knowledge of the dispute in an attempt to find common ground. They successfully exchanged viewpoints, but Smith and Singleton agree that the meeting produced no resolution. Smith said multiple attempts to contact Singleton for a follow-up meeting have gone unanswered.

An action item for an eminent domain vote on the property appeared on the commission’s agenda again for its July 2 meeting. It was also removed prior to that meeting and was not on the agenda for the commission’s July 16 meeting. The commission meets again July 30.

Randy Parker, an economist, and Dana Farmer, a lawyer, attended the meeting with Smith and Fackrell as “concerned citizens.” Both said they believe state law bars the county from taking Singleton’s property so it can be used as a takeout for rafters. They reference a section of the law that they say expressly prohibits taking property via eminent domain for recreational use.

“There’s nothing else that I can imagine that they could even entertain using that property for other than recreational use,” Parker said. “I mean literally and absolutely there’s just nothing in my mind that could be used for except for a takeout on the river.”

So if Morgan County can’t take the property and Singleton doesn’t want to sell it for less than $6 million and no one knows if an easement runs through it, where does that leave the young man with the tube who’s trying to get to shore?

The same place as everyone else involved: up a creek without a paddle.

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