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Show Park City gains title to land in legal ruling by Christopher Smart Third District Court has awarded title to grounds along Deer Valley Road and Rossie Hill Drive to the Park City Municipal Corporation following a suit by the Union Pacific Railroad, which gained easements there before the turn of the century. In a complex legal action, Union Pacific Land Resources, the land management branch of railroad, filed suit for deeds to property where tracks were laid to serve Park City mines. The land in question was a Union . ., Pacific spur before,, tracks were torn up in 1970. The track began behind " the Utah Coal and Lumber restaurant, restau-rant, ran up Heber Avenue and continued up Deer Valley Road to the present location of the Stone Bridge Condominiums. The tracks continued up Rossie Hill Drive to what is now Ontario Avenue and up to the old Ontario Mill. Of these grounds, where track no longer exists, four or five parcels were named in the suit, along with individuals and lending institutions that hold legal titles. When the tracks were laid, sometime before the turn of the century, the railroad was readily granted easement to properties because of the need for a railroad. Also, the property was not very valuable then. The focus of the dispute was the two sets of title documents which exist for the grounds, said City Attorney Tom Clyde. One set of documents were federal grants to mining interests, he explained. The others were private deeds. On Monday Third District Court Judge Leonard Russon ruled that when the railroad quit using the easements the deeds went back to the mining companies. The city's right of way on Deer Valley Road and Rossie Hill Drive were obtained from those mining interests. The real concern, Clyde said, was a property on Deer Valley Road. If Union Pacific had won title to the right of way, the city would have had to condemn the land and buy it back from the railroad at current market value, which might have run as high as $200,000. Of the privately held grounds on Rossie Hill, both the railroad and private property owners claimed to have been paying taxes on the same land for at least four years. Park City resident Paul Kalk-brenner Kalk-brenner holds deeds to three of five lots that were named in the suit. He . was partially successful in retaining deeds to those properties, Clyde said, but lost some to the city's claim of right of way on Rossie Hill. Summit County records were a shambles in the past, according to Union Pacific attorney Dennis Farley. "Interloping on deeds," along with the questions of the easements, had added to the confusion, he said. The property values in Park City haven't always been as high as they are now, Farley noted, and property lines weren't always as important. |