Popular Guest Ranch Trapped In Forest Service Limbo

LA GRANDE, Ore. - The U.S. Forest Service says it may be years before it decides what to do with a popular 80-acre guest ranch that it purchased three years ago in the Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon.

Red's Horse Ranch, along the Minam River in the Eagle Cap Wilderness, is eight miles from the nearest road, accessible only by air and a maze of horse trails.

It has been closed since the acquisition, leaving a void in the lives of 7,000 to 10,000 horseback riders, pilots and backpackers who wrote letters and signed petitions.

The ranch includes a log lodge, five log cabins, two duplexes, a barn, lodgepole corrals and a grass airstrip first used in 1931.

The Forest Service reportedly paid $1.2 million for the ranch in 1994 as part of a land swap. At the time, it was assessed at $142,760.

Tom Carlson, a Forest Service planner in Enterprise, Ore., blamed budget shortfalls for the agency's indecision about what to do with the ranch. An analysis of Forest Service management options probably would take six months - if the agency could afford to start the process, he said.

During the frontier era, the ranch was a hideout for an outlaw gang led by Hank Vaughn, a notorious horse thief and killer. In the 1920s, it became a logging camp. Portland firefighter Red Higgins bought it in 1946 and turned it into a popular retreat for Hollywood stars.

Burt Lancaster is said to have helped lay the concrete floor of one of the buildings, and legend has it that John Wayne once flew in

aboard a DC-3 almost too big for the runway.