Howard Haynes is hunched over a photo album, remembering a plane crash on his family's ranch 50 years ago.
A land transaction -- the largest of its kind in the state's history -- has Haynes thinking about the ranch 40 miles east of Salt Lake City and looking over this book of old photographs.The stunning landscape still belongs to the family, but Haynes and his two siblings donated development rights on 8,900 acres of the Haynes Land & Livestock Co. ranch in the largest conservation easement arrangement in the state's history.
The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization, on Thursday transferred two conservation easements including most of Haynes' family ranch to the state's Department of Natural Resources' Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands through its Forest Legacy Program.
The easements protect a total of 10,690 acres of forested land in fast-growing Summit and Morgan counties.
The donation is the largest gift of land value ever donated to the state of Utah and to the entire Forest Legacy program nationally, said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, who has worked tirelessly for federal funds that paid for the easements.
"The landowners have made a very special gift to present and future generations of Utahns."
With Thursday's actions, the state takes its first tiptoe into the business of managing open lands preserved under conservation easements, said Art DuFault, forestry division director.
"Utah's private forest lands are under siege from development pressures, especially along the Wasatch Front," DuFault said. "We're thrilled to launch Utah's Forest Legacy with the protection of the productivity of these two stunning properties."
So, in between family meetings, Howard Haynes is reviewing old photos taken on the ranch.
One shows the black-and-white image of a crumpled United Airlines passenger plane that plowed into the mountainside during a 1939 snowstorm.
It was the deadliest crash in North America at the time, Haynes remembers. Twenty-eight people died. Bones and teeth were scattered over forested lands thick with aspen, Douglas fir and Engelmann spruce.
In happier photos, kids peek out of the sheep camp trailers Haynes' father called home while tending up to 5,000 head of sheep.
There are photos of the cliffs the family calls "Little Bryce" and of the "Harp tree" formed by an anomaly that caused a tree to grow sideways then upward in several shoots so as to resemble a harp.
In photograph after photograph, there are pillows of wildflowers.
As part of one agreement signed Thursday, the Haynes family may use the ranch as they always have -- grazing cattle and sheep, hunting, and harvesting some timber. By terms of the easement -- appraised at $8.5 million -- the family may build up to six houses on the property.
If they sell the property, the new owners must refrain from subdividing the land forever.
"Our goal was to preserve it like my dad had it," said Haynes' sister, Shirley McFarlane, who has managed the ranch since her father died 20 years ago.
Howard H. Haynes Sr. was never heavy-handed about his wishes for the land. "We knew how he felt. It would have been really traumatic for him to see that divided up into cabin spaces or subdivisions," McFarlane said.
Last year, McFarlane began to consider: What would happen to the ranch her parents built when she and her brothers passed on?
After weighing the possibilities, McFarlane, who is in her 60s, talked with her two older brothers about a conservation easement for the ranch. They agreed.
With 13 children between the three siblings, McFarlane knew the decision would be easier today, with three viewpoints to consider, rather than later. Her father bought much of the land for $5 an acre, but the ranch is now valued at $14 million.
"We were nervous it would eventually be sold because there would be so many people with different opinions," she said.
Such is the case in the story of a second land conservation project also formalized Thursday 30 miles west of the Haynes Ranch.
This is the 7,300-acre Peaceful Valley Ranch, located three miles from East Canyon Reservoir. Grant McFarlane, Shirley's husband, is part of a huge partnership that now owns the ranch.
In the early days, there were five or six shareholders; Grant McFarlane's grandfather started running cattle and managing the ranch in 1913 but worked his way into majority ownership within a few years.
But the ranch ownership family tree has changed dramatically. Now there are about 50 shareholders who live in seven states and 16 cities. So recent decisions about what to do with the land, which is no longer profitable, have created a quandary.
The great majority agreed to preserve it, said Grant McFarlane. But some shareholders who live in the East and don't have access to the land want to cash out. Meanwhile, the ranch needs improvements -- fences, bridges and housing -- to become usable.
The ranch board of directors attempted to balance good business judgment with a social philosophy: "We didn't pay anything for it; it was a gift to us," Grant McFarlane said. "It is our heritage, we wanted to preserve it as it is."
As part of the land conservation easement deal signed Thursday, the Peaceful Valley Ranch shareholders can build a lodge on the property.
In the easement's first phase, the ranch trust receives $900,000 in exchange for the development rights on 1,790 acres of forest lands.
The Trust for Public Land must raise $1.6 million for the development rights to the remaining acres.
A partnership of people worked for two years to pull together a complicated set of details for the two land transactions. Trust for Public Land, based in Santa Fe, N.M., has spearheaded the effort.
The Peaceful Valley's wildlife habitat, watershed protection opportunities, trails and landowners made the partnership successful, said Deb Frey, project manager for the Trust for Public Land.
"Time is running out, however. With Jeremy Ranch on one end of East Canyon and East Canyon Resort on the other; I have no doubt that the ranch will be lost to development unless we act quickly."
The Trust for Public Land has protected one million acres of land valued at $1.5 billion since it was founded in 1972.