Horse Creek Ranch in the mountains of west Carson City.
Courtesy
Members of the Carson City Open Space Advisory Committee didn’t take formal action on Horse Creek Ranch at their Monday meeting, but they reviewed a home project near a conservation easement and the city’s annual monitoring report of the conserved property.
Historic Horse Creek Ranch lies north of U.S. Highway 50 West in the mountainous terrain of the Carson Range. The property entails forest, riparian zones and meadows. Carson City purchased an agricultural conservation easement including 175 acres in 2009. The price tag was approximately $1.1 million, with more than half of that coming from State Question No. 1 conservation funding, according to Open Space Manager Lyndsey Boyer.
The property is still privately owned and was purchased by a new owner in 2020. But the conditions of the conservation easement remain, preventing large-scale development.
Boyer described a conservation easement as a tool unique to each property. Conservation easements restrict development rights and can be used to protect watershed, agricultural land, wildlife habitat and scenic value.
“It allows the property to remain in private ownership while also protecting it in perpetuity,” said Boyer. “Those restrictions will remain in place even if the property is sold as this one has been.”
The new owner plans to build a home, garage and accessory dwelling unit on a 25-acre portion of the property excluded from the conservation easement.
On March 26, Carson City planning commissioners unanimously approved a special use permit for an approximately 1,732-square-foot accessory dwelling unit (being developed with a 5,204-square-foot residence). The building site is in the Skyline Restricted Area and must meet hillside development standards.
Additionally, because a portion of the proposed access road runs through the eastern edge of the conservation easement area, the project had to be presented to OSAC.
But members on Monday didn’t take issue with the proposed access road that will fortify a route already out of the designated meadow. Boyer said both the home and road — which must meet fire safety and engineering standards — are allowed under the easement.
“We’ll be actively monitoring during construction making sure that tenets of the easement are maintained, and they are not going outside the footprint of those 25 acres,” she said.
OSAC Chair Mark Kimbrough said the property is a wonderful place to live and that the new home will help protect the nearby easement.
“Actually a presence there protects it even more, probably,” he said. “There won’t be trespassers coming in with somebody owning a lot in there and the house in a visible place and somebody living there… We always appreciate people willing to work with us on these types of things.”
The easement requires the city to monitor the conservation area annually, and Carson City Senior Natural Resource Specialist Marenna Lovejoy presented the latest report Monday.
Lovejoy said generally, the landowner is in compliance with the easement. Working with federal and/or state partners, the city would like to facilitate some management measures for forest, stream and meadow health.
“The density of trees is quite thick, and there is dwarf mistletoe present, and so the NRCS (U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service) recommended… doing some thinning to address those concerns,” Lovejoy said.
According to the city, such measures could be funded by the new owner or through a stewardship account set up by the original owner. Volunteers have also been undertaking so-called thistle digs in the summer to combat invasive plant species.