Wyoming will sell a 1 square mile (2.6 square kilometer) parcel of virgin land bordering Grand Teton National Park to the US government for $100 million after Gov. Mark Gordon signed a deal Friday that ends the state’s longstanding threats to offload it to a developer.
Under the agreement, the federal government will pay the assessed value of $62.5 million for the property, while privately raised funds will provide the remainder.
The rolling terrain, covered in a mix of trees, shrubs and sagebrush, has a commanding view of the iconic Teton Range and is a prime habitat for animals including elk, moose and grizzly bones.
Gordon, a Republican, announced in a statement that he approved the deal to add the land to the national park after his office ensured that a U.S. Bureau of Land Management plan to manage a large area of the Southwest Wyoming doesn’t come with too many restrictions. on development, including oil and gas drilling, a stipulation made by the state legislature last winter.
Still, Gordon criticized the BLM’s master plan for the arid, mineral-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 in southwest Wyoming,” Gordon said in the statement.
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Interior department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Wyoming has owned the property southeast of Jackson Hole, bordered by Grand Teton on three sides and national forest on the fourth, since long before the national park was established in 1929. It is the last and most valuable of the four plots of state property sold to be annexed. by the park during the last decade.
The federal government granted these lands to many states, especially in the West, as a state to help raise money for public education. Despite the location and astronomical value of the plots, they provided relatively little revenue for the state through grazing leases and other uses.
So, over the years, governors have tried to goad federal officials into buying the land by threatening to auction it off.
The Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners, made up of Gordon and the state’s four other top state elected officials, voted 3-2 in November to proceed with the sale after debating whether to negotiate a rights trade federally owned minerals elsewhere in the state.