Montana
Montana Viewpoint: A rube arrives in Trout Creek
Jim Elliott
I had been eyeballing a piece of property in Trout Creek for about a year. It was cheap enough, I had the money, why not? So, I bought it.
It was what around here people generously call a stump farm—stripped of timber, and in this particular case, filled with two-foot-deep ruts from logging equipment. A strip of land that could only generously be called a road led a half-mile to the property from the county road. When the seller’s son heard his mother was putting it up for sale, he and a friend hustled over to take the timber.
They logged in the Spring, they were in that much of a hurry, hence the ruts. The access road was more of a canal because they had used a D-8 Cat to pull the loaded log trucks to the gravel road that led to the mill, and whatever ground had been in the original road was up where the borrow pit would usually be.
There were two buildings on the place, a chicken coop which I did not hesitate to burn down, and the roofless Fox cabin on the back part of the place. There had been a well-built squared cedar log house, but I was twenty years too late for that because it had burned down.
Barney, the logger-son met me on the place and handed me a beer. Not a bad beginning, I thought, as I looked out on acres and acres of stumps, ruts, and scraggly trees.
“The thing this place is best suited for is timber,” Barney said. It was good advice, I now know, but I didn’t take it. I wanted to farm so I hired a woman with D-8 Cat and she stumped twenty -five acres for me. Acres with which I soon had an intimate and arduous relationship, picking sticks and moving burn piles around.
I had farm equipment left to me by my father, so I went back to the farm in Pennsylvania which I had left in 1960 and made arrangements to load it on a railcar and ship it to Montana. It took a month to load it. My most vivid memory of that time is the Farmall H (that I learned to drive on) dying in the middle of the busiest intersection in the town I was shipping it from. It was something I learned to take in stride.
So, the equipment loaded, I set out to beat it to Trout Creek, which shouldn’t have been very hard, but a blown tranny in my 1962 Chevy half-ton allowed me to experience a week in Dekalb, Illinois. But I did beat the railroad to Trout Creek.
A friend of mine and I were sitting in the old Trout Creek Café waiting for the local to arrive. I had had to find a place to off-load the equipment and the L-P mill had allowed me the use of their spur track and loading dock. “There’s your stuff!” my friend Roy shouted when the local came into sight, so we beat it over to the mill to watch them spot the railcar.
Honestly, I should have been embarrassed to ship it, there was so much junk in it, but there was good stuff, too: four tractors, a baler, a swather, a combine, two wagons with high sides crammed full of stuff, plows, discs—all the paraphernalia beginning farmer could want.
As we were looking at the railcar and the work ahead of unloading it, two men approached, one of moderate size and build named Dude and the other a more or less mountain-sized man named (of course) Shorty, although he often went by the name of Copenhagen. They were brothers.
“How you gonna get that off?” asked Shorty. It had taken four weeks to load it, so I figured on at least a week to unload it with the help of a couple of friends, but my basic answer was, I didn’t know. Shorty did. If we waited to the weekend, Shorty said, the mill would gladly loan them the equipment to unload it. I don’t know if the mill ever knew about it, but they must have, because on Saturday morning, bright and early, Dude and Shorty used the mill’s 966 log loader to pick my equipment off the flatcar and place it on the ground. It took two hours.
I also learned that what might have been junk back east was welcomed in Montana. Looking at the wagons, Shorty said, admiringly, “High speed wheels!” meaning that the axles were fitted with roller bearings, not babbit.
I was beginning to feel at home.
Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for over 25 years. Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.
The Socorro Independent School District honored and celebrated its top two educators at the 2026 Teacher of the Year Gala on Friday, May 8 at the El Paso Convention Center.
Cristina Garcia, a fifth-grade teacher at Mission Ridge Elementary School, was recognized as the 2026 SISD Elementary Teacher of the Year. Javier Esparza, an audio and video broadcast teacher at Socorro High School, was named the 2026 SISD Secondary Teacher of the Year.
https://www.ktsm.com/news/socorro-isd-honors-top-2-teachers-at-gala-celebration/
EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — A proposed high-voltage transmission project in far East El Paso is raising concerns among residents in the Montana Vista area, as developers work to determine a potential route that could impact private property.
The project, known as Pecos West, is being developed by Grid United and would create a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line connecting El Paso to southeastern New Mexico.
According to the company, the goal is to link major parts of the U.S. electric grid, specifically the Western and Eastern interconnections, allowing electricity to move in both directions between regions. Developers say the project could strengthen energy reliability, expand access to power markets, and help prevent outages during extreme weather.
Grid United also describes Pecos West as a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investment that could bring jobs, tax revenue, and long-term economic benefits to communities along the route.
However, for residents in Montana Vista, the immediate concern is not the long-term benefits, but what the project could mean for their land.
At a community meeting Saturday morning, several residents were able to voice their concern, telling KFOX14/CBS4 they feel they have not received enough information about the project’s path or timeline, especially as discussions about a preliminary route continue.
“We haven’t got anything from you,” said Armando Rodriguez, president of the Montana Vista Landowners. “Not one quote.”
Others echoed concerns about communication, calling on the company to directly notify homeowners who may be affected.
“You need to go to these houses, give people information, and say this could affect you,” one resident said.
Grid United says the project is still in the planning and development phase, and no final route has been approved.
The company says construction would only begin after securing regulatory approvals and negotiating land agreements with property owners.
Company representatives also emphasized that landowner participation is voluntary.
“Pecos does not have eminent domain,” said Alexis Marquez, community relations manager for the project. “If a landowner does not want it on their property, we would look at alternate routes.”
Developers say outreach will continue as planning progresses, but residents are asking for more direct communication now, especially those who believe they could be directly impacted.
The project is not expected to be completed anytime soon, with Grid United estimating that Pecos West could become operational in the mid-2030s if approved.
For now, the conversation in Montana Vista reflects a familiar tension seen in large infrastructure project, balancing long-term regional benefits with local concerns about transparency, property, and community impact.
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EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Following widespread neighborhood concerns first reported by KTSM 9 News on Friday, residents of the Montana Vista area came face-to-face with developers of the proposed “Pecos West” transmission line project on Saturday morning, May 9 during a community meeting held at the Montana Vista Community Center.
The multi-million dollar project, spearheaded by power grid developer Grid United, aims to build a massive transmission line connecting the El Paso area to southeastern New Mexico.
While developers tout the project as a crucial link to prevent grid bottlenecks, families living in the path of the proposed line continue to voice mounting frustration and distrust over how the land acquisition is being handled.
On Friday, Grid United released a statement to KTSM insisting their one-on-one land negotiations were conducted out of respect for private property rights. But at Saturday’s community gathering, residents and advocates made it clear they aren’t buying it.
“People are afraid. I’m not afraid. I’m angry,” said Armando Rodriguez, president of the Union of Montana Vista Landowners, who previously said that developers had been quietly approaching his neighbors for months with varying buyout offers.
Only about a dozen residents and advocates attended the weekend meeting, but they loudly questioned why the company spent the past year approaching landowners individually rather than addressing the community as a whole.
During the exchange, project officials admitted they have already acquired about 50 percent of the properties in the impacted area. Grid United later clarified to KTSM that the exact number fluctuates frequently, just like the proposed route.
Community organizers argued that the company’s isolated approach leaves residents vulnerable and misinformed.
“When a company like this turns up and says, ‘We’re going to buy your property.’ We must ensure that community members understand that they have the right to say no, or that they have the right to negotiate a higher value,” said Veronica Carbajal, an organizer with the Sembrando Esperanza Coalition.
Carbajal highlighted that the lack of widespread notification and a standardized compensation formula is creating deep unease.
“They’ve already bought properties, but they have not established notification to every resident that will be impacted, nor have they set up a formula for compensation,” Carbajal said. “So what we can see online through the title transfers is that there is a very wide distinction between how much people are being paid. We don’t want the community to be divided. We also want people to understand that this is voluntary. They do not have to sell if they don’t want to.”
A major point of contention at Saturday’s meeting was the threat of eminent domain. Grid United explained that, as a private company, they do not possess eminent domain authority, insisting that if a landowner refuses to sell, the company will simply find an alternative route.
“At Pecos West we’re very landowner-first approach,” said Alexis Marquez, Pecos West community relations manager. “So if a landowner does not want (the transmission line) on the property, then we would find alternative routes.”
But Rodriguez remains highly skeptical that the developers would simply walk away from targeted plots.
“A corporation as big as you, a multi-million dollar corporation, I find it hard to believe that you would invest money into something this big and just walk away if the family said, ‘No, I don’t want to sell it,’” Rodriguez told officials during the meeting. “The question is: Are you really serious about what you’re saying here? Or is this just another dog and pony show?”
Project leaders conceded they need to adjust their efforts in engaging and informing the community, promising more meetings to come. However, residents emphasized that trust is currently broken and will only be rebuilt with concrete action.
El Paso County Commissioner Jackie Butler, who helped organize the meeting, said the County has no power to halt the proposed project, but she said she has been communicating with project officials and is trying to connect them with community advocacy organizations.
“I learned very quickly that the County does not have any authority or permitting process to stop these kinds of projects. And so that’s when I started connecting Pecos West to community members so that they could get directly involved,” Butler said. “My questions to Pecos West have been, Why do you have to come through our community? And even if you have to build through our region, you should go around it.”
Moving forward, the residents in attendance made it clear they do not intend to sell their property. They are demanding Grid United bring all impacted neighbors to the table as a collective before any more land is purchased.
If the project continues to move forward, construction is not expected to begin until the mid-2030s.
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