Tree plantings eyed for protecting views at North Dakota’s oldest state park

MANDAN, N.D. — North Dakota’s Parks and Recreation Department is turning to tree plantings to protect scenic views in Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, after nearby landowners declined voluntary easements on their land.

The department’s Natural Resources Division will look at soil types and growth patterns and identify types and quantities of trees that “would make the best viewshed in those particular areas,” Parks and Recreation Director Cody Schulz said.

The work will last over the next two summers, he said. Plantings likely will occur in spring 2024.

Funding the plantings will be the $50,000 the 2021 Legislature approved for paying the three landowners for viewshed easements, Schulz said. The easements would have stopped development within the 81.21-acre area, to preserve its scenic and historic views.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer commanded the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Abraham Lincoln from 1873-76 prior to his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or Greasy Grass, in present-day Montana.

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is the oldest of North Dakota’s 13 state parks, established in 1907 at the former military site south of present-day Mandan on the Missouri River.

The state parks director said the landowners “simply did not want to encumber that property.”

“What we were asking for was a commitment not to build structures in those certain areas, and they simply just did not want to make that commitment, and I completely understand,” Schulz said.

Brandon Koch, who lives on property his father owns bordering the park, said the easements “just didn’t make sense” for his family, being a “very small amount of money” that would have “handcuffed” future development for years to come.

He said tree plantings are a satisfactory outcome and in line with what his family had asked for to begin with.

“I think the tree idea is a good idea,” Koch said.

Another landowner declined to comment; a third did not return a Tribune phone message.

The Morton County Planning and Zoning Commission in July, tentatively, will begin hearings about ending a building moratorium in the park area and putting height restrictions on new buildings that can be seen from the park’s Cavalry Square, according to County Commissioner Andy Zachmeier.

Morton County has had the building moratorium for two decades. County officials a few years ago began discussing the idea of a permanent regulation, and in 2020 they wrote to the state about protecting the viewshed.

The 2021 Legislature subsequently approved the $50,000 for voluntary easements.