Tracking the DM&E's big dream: Chapter 3

About halfway between Wright and Newcastle is the Gordon ranch, which is along Black Thunder Creek, a narrow, often dry tributary of the Belle Fourche River. There aren't many trees in this part of Wyoming, but the few there are -- mostly cottonwoods -- grow along river and creek beds.

If you're used to lakes, thick hardwood forests and lush green

The Gordon family began ranching in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming nearly 40 years ago. Clockwise from left are Thelma, Gary, Billie, 5 year-old- Billie J., Glenn, 3-year-old Wade, 8-year-old Megan and Dana.

lawns, you might call this part of Wyoming desolate or barren. But the people who live here have grown to appreciate its stark beauty. They like the fact that if you walk to the top of a butte you can gaze for miles across the plains without seeing a power line, car or house. They cherish the sunsets that explode across the grasslands uninterrupted in rich orange, red and brown hues. And they listen for the early-morning symphonies of songbirds like the magpie, which trill on the wing in this mostly perchless land.

In 1963, Nebraska natives Billie and Thelma Gordon acquired a ranch that now covers 17,000 acres in Powder River country to run beef cattle on. That might seem like a lot of acreage, and it is by Minnesota standards. But in this part of the country, where the sparse grazing land can support only one cow for every 50 acres, the Gordon ranch is on the small side.

When Billie retired and moved back to Nebraska, he turned the ranch over to his son Gary, who now operates it with his son, Glenn. Glenn and his wife, Dana, and their three young children live in a mobile home next to the home place.

Until about two years ago the Gordons and their ranching neighbors maintained a peaceful but wary attitude toward the coal industry and the railroads that carry its black treasure to more populous parts of the county. Ranchers have maintained this cautious co-existence ever since geologists began to tap eastern Wyoming's rich energy reserves in the mid-1800s.

But peaceful and wary turned to fearful and angry 21Ú2 years ago when the Gordons learned that the new owners of a broken-down railroad planned to rebuild and extend new tracks into Wyoming ranch land for the first time in a century.

Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad President Kevin Schieffer announced in 1997 that he planned to breathe new life into the old Chicago and Northwestern line through Minnesota and South Dakota by refurbishing and reinventing it.

Schieffer, who once was an aide to former U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, contends the only way to save the railroad is to diversify and expand it so that it can haul coal, as well as grain, bentonite clay and the other products it now ships.

"We're a regional railroad with extraordinary capital problems," Schieffer said in an interview at his Brookings office late last year. "The long-term viability of the line is very much tied to this project. The line is worn out."

The railroad's $1.4 billion plan, which is awaiting federal approval, includes beefing up the railroad with new and better tracks, adding engines and cars, and building switching and staging yards.

If approved, the new line could bring anywhere from 20 to 50 coal trains a day between the Powder River Basin through southeastern Wyoming, central South Dakota and southern Minnesota to Winona, where the coal would be shipped to power plants throughout the Midwest.

The project has the Gordons and other ranchers worried. They worry about the tracks cutting their property in half, cattle being hit and noxious weeds spreading along the railbed.

They also worry about fires.

In a good year only about 14 inches of rain falls on eastern Wyoming, and incessant high winds cause much of that to evaporate. It is so dry in this part of the state that plants -- buffalo grass, western wheatgrass and needle grass among them -- develop root systems that go as deep as two miles into the soil to find moisture.

So, when the Gordons see thunderclouds roll in, they watch over their land with fearful ambivalence.

"We're 35 miles from any fire department," Dana Gordon says as she prepares dinner in the home's tiny kitchen. "When it thunders and lightnings we watch for fires." Their only immediate protection is the 200-gallon water truck in their yard, one of several county-owned tankers parked on ranches throughout the region.

Ranchers fear railcar wheels will throw sparks that could lead to the incineration of thousands of acres of grazing land and endanger their cattle.

The controversy surrounding the railroad project in eastern Wyoming, as in southeastern Minnesota, pits rural and urban interests against one another.

In Newcastle, where the Gordons do their shopping and their children go to school, there is nearly unanimous support for the DM&E project. In fact, most of the dozens of small towns in Wyoming, South Dakota and western Minnesota that would be affected by the project support it.

"Ol' Schieffer, he's got these cities around here pretty well buffaloed," Glenn Gordon says. "He's promising a lot. If this thing is going to be stopped it's going to have to be stopped back there'' in Rochester.

Schieffer, who says he's been in the kitchens of many of the ranch families whose property would be affected by the extended rail line, says the railroad has addressed the ranchers' concerns in the form of a 52-page "landowner program."

The document, which was compiled with the help of a group of South Dakota and Wyoming ranchers assembled by the railroad, specifies, among other things, how DM&E will control noxious weeds and provide for gates, fences, tunnels and grates to protect livestock.

The program also explains how landowners will be compensated for the inconvenience of having a railroad running through their property and under what circumstances the DM&E will reimburse ranchers if their land, fences or livestock are damaged by trains.

"They leave the table with a signed, legally enforceable document," Schieffer says about ranchers who sign the agreement. "But this isn't 'sign the deal and it's done.' It's 'sign the deal, and it's just begun.' We'll continue to work with them. This just takes a lot of the mystery out of it."

Schieffer acknowledges that there's a core of opposition to the project among cattle ranchers in eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota. But he says the opponents wouldn't be so rigid in their opposition if they weren't afraid to sit down and talk to him.

However, opponents such as the Gordons and neighbors Nancy and Donley Darnell, who've traveled as far east as Rochester to rally opposition to the project, say they don't trust Schieffer to honor his promises. They contend he's just telling ranchers and others along the route what they want to hear, and won't follow through once the government approves the project.

"He's already changed the route (through eastern Wyoming) three times," Dana Gordon says. "We don't know what to believe."

Ranchers are also concerned that if the railroad takes their land through eminent domain proceedings they'll be handicapped, both financially and geographically.

The railroad executives "basically don't care," says Nancy Darnell, a fourth-generation rancher whose family owns 100,00 acres of grazing land along the proposed route. "They have to pay you fair market value. But that's only for a very small portion of your land that gets cut up. That's a one-time payment for something you've got to live with for the rest of your life."

The Darnells have fostered what Black Hills Sierra Club executive director Sam Clauson of Rapid City calls "an unholy alliance" against the project between ranchers and environmentalists.

The two groups are often at odds over such issues as grazing rights and treatment of predatory animals. But on the DM&E issue, they're teammates, with both groups contending the train project would ruin one of the nation's few unspoiled and open prairies, harm wildlife and lead to landslides, erosion of stream beds, and destruction of wetlands.

"There's no way you can mitigate these problems," Clauson says.