Wyoming governor approves $100 million sale of state land to join Grand Teton National Park

[December 30, 2024]  By MEAD GRUVER

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming will sell a 1-square-mile (2.6-square-kilometer) parcel of pristine land bordering Grand Teton National Park to the U.S. government for $100 million after Gov. Mark Gordon signed off on a deal Friday that ends the state's longstanding threats to unload it to a developer.

Under the agreement the federal government will pay the appraised value of $62.5 million for the property, while privately raised funds will supply the rest.

Carpeted by a mix of trees, shrubs and sagebrush, the rolling land has a commanding view of the iconic Teton Range and is prime habitat for animals including elk, moose and grizzly bears.

Gordon, a Republican, announced in a statement that he was approving the deal to add the land to the national park after his office ensured that a U.S. Bureau of Land Management plan for managing a vast area of southwestern Wyoming doesn't carry too many restrictions on development including oil and gas drilling — a stipulation made by the state Legislature last winter.

Even so, Gordon criticized the BLM's overall plan for the arid, minerals-rich area 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Grand Teton as “the Biden administration's parting shot” at the state.

"I have been in contact with Wyoming’s congressional delegation and potential members of the incoming Trump Administration to fix the mess an ideological Biden administration is leaving for southwestern Wyoming,” Gordon said in the statement.

Part of a square-mile section of state land in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park is seen, Oct. 5, 2023. (Bradly J. Boner/Jackson Hole News & Guide via AP, File)

Interior Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Wyoming has owned the southeastern Jackson Hole property, bordered by Grand Teton on three sides and national forest on the fourth, since long before the national park's establishment in 1929. It is the last and most valuable of four state-owned parcels sold to be annexed by the park in the past decade.

The federal government granted such lands to many states, particularly in the West, at statehood to help raise money for public education. Despite the location and astronomical value of the parcels, they brought in relatively little revenue for the state through grazing leases and other uses.

So over the years, governors have sought to goad federal officials into buying the lands by threatening to auction them off.

The Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners, made up of Gordon and the state's other four top state elected officials, voted 3-2 in November to proceed with the sale after debating whether to negotiate a trade for federally owned mineral rights elsewhere in the state.

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