In the Flathead Valley, Wealthy Private Landowners Leave Former Timberland Unlocked to the Public

On a soggy Saturday afternoon in late November, Stan Ottosen, head of security for Flathead Ridge Ranch, piloted his pickup truck over Browns Meadow Pass, contouring gingerly along the two-lane ribbon of rutted road. He drove slowly to avoid the kettles and potholes, which an early-season slurry of snow and larch needles hadn’t improved, and he afforded a friendly berth to oncoming motorists, all of them sporting blaze-orange hunting vests, coats and flap caps.

“How’s it going?” Ottosen, a former Kalispell police detective, asked one local who pulled up alongside his pickup, which is emblazoned with the Flathead Ridge Ranch insignia. “I don’t see any antlers back there so I guess it could be better.”

The hunter, a local named Cory Homola, leaned out his window, flashing Ottosen an informal two-finger salute and nodding to the young passenger riding in his cab.

“He’s still too young to hunt so we’re mostly just looking around,” Homola said of his 8-year-old son, Max. Then, after fixing his gaze on Ottosen’s truck, he added: “Hey, I heard they’re going to reopen some of that area down by Rollins back up to hunting. In Lake County. Is that true?”

Shaking his head, Ottosen explained that, while the owners of Flathead Ridge Ranch are committed to leaving more than 80% of their property open for responsible public use, they’re restricting access on about 20,000 acres stretching east toward Lake Mary Ronan and Flathead Lake, closing those parcels to hunting.

“That sucks,” Homola said. “I live right there. It’s in our backyard. But we like it back here. And it’s nice that not much has really changed.”

After bidding the hunters farewell, Ottosen acknowledged Homola’s disappointment over the new restrictions, explaining that generations of hunters have treated the area as de facto public land despite a century of private ownership. But since joining Flathead Ridge Ranch in 2021, Ottosen said he’s observed a positive shift in the public’s attitude toward the new landowners.

“I understand. When you grow up in an area like this, and you grow accustomed to using the landscape in a certain way, it’s like a birthright. It almost becomes part of your soul,” Ottosen, who grew up in Bigfork, said. “It was tough at first. A big part of it is people don’t like change, even good change. When we started putting up signage, especially the private property signs, a lot of people assumed the worst. But most of the rules haven’t changed. It’s just they’re better enforced now.”  

Cresting the pass and beginning the descent down Mount Creek to U.S. Highway 2, an unbroken cloud cover obscured the 60-mile view of Glacier National Park’s snow-latticed peaks to the northwest, but the overcast conditions hemmed in the immediate surroundings that Ottosen is responsible for patrolling — about 103,000 acres of private land whose owners have opted to leave open for public access on the condition that people follow certain rules.

Pausing to take in the 360-degree views, Ottosen said only a small part of his job entails enforcing those rules; the larger responsibility lies in explaining them.

Despite Ottosen’s law enforcement background and his title as head of security, he functions more as a public liaison between the wealthy owners of Flathead Ridge Ranch and the Flathead Valley families like Homolas, for whom the forested landscape stretching from Niarada to Kila has for decades served as an extension of their backyards.

And while that access arrangement remains largely intact, the couple who purchased the land four years ago, Texas insurance magnates Mark and Robyn Jones, have implemented changes and set new rules across portions of their 126,000-acre acquisition, which they dubbed Flathead Ridge Ranch.

The Joneses have designated more than 83% of Flathead Ridge Ranch as “open for responsible public use,” but they’ve restricted access to all of the parcels they own in Lake County, where the family has built a private residence, a decision they made “to protect the safety and privacy of the owners.”

They’ve also prohibited off-road motorized use, which they say protects wildlife habitat and prevents the erosion and sedimentation of logging roads. Open camp fires are not allowed, although they have made an exception for propane fire pits.

“This restriction is to help reduce the fire danger from unattended campfires and to help protect our land and our neighbors’ land,” according to Flathead Ridge Ranch’s website. 

Camping is allowed, but it’s limited to 7 days. Campers who outstay their welcome get a visit from Ottosen, whose three-man security team patrols the sprawling property in multi-day shifts. Campers must pack out their trash and clean up after themselves.

On his tours of the property, Ottosen has encountered outlaws and squatters, employing a kill-’em-with-kindness force of personality that he developed as a cop, and disbanding the camps without incident.

“It takes us about 12 days to run the entire circuit,” Ottosen said. “When I first started, we had some interesting encounters with people who were staying on the property. But the new rules are for the public’s safety as much as anyone else’s, and they’re for the health of the landscape. This is the first time in 100 years that this land has been owned by someone who isn’t trying to make their bottom dollar off it. We’re really trying to earn the public’s trust, and it seems like most people have come around.”

Despite the new rules, which Ottosen said initially rankled the locals, the Joneses have emerged as among the most permissive land stewards in the state, enrolling more than 100,000 acres in Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ (FWP) Block Management program, a cooperative agreement that helps private landowners manage hunting activities on their property. They’ve also entered into a Public Access Land Agreement (PALA) with FWP, which helps open and improve recreational access to isolated parcels of public land girded by private real estate, as well as in the Unlocking Public Lands program.

Under the conditions of those initiatives, anyone hunting big game on Flathead Ridge Ranch property, which spans rich deer and elk habitat between Montana Highway 28 at Niarada and U.S. 2 in Kila — including the Hubbart Reservoir and Red Gate areas — is required to hang an orange season-long permission tag from their rearview window.

Stacks of the cards are available at a dozen kiosks the Joneses built at strategic access points, arteries and road junctions lacing their property, which FWP uses to quantify Block Management land use, gathering valuable social and environmental data the agency wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to capture.

Hunters must detach a portion of the tag, record the names of everyone in the party and return it to FWP, or drop it in any of the kiosk boxes. They’re also encouraged to fill out a comment card at the end of the season and return it to FWP headquarters, no postage necessary.

Based on the results collected during the 2024 big game season, FWP’s regional access manager, Macy Dugan, calculated that hunters logged 9,097 days on Flathead Ridge Ranch’s Block Management lands, an estimate based on 1,524 permission cards, with an average of six hunter days recorded on each card. Dugan received only 194 completed comment cards, for a 13% return, but said 94% of those hunters reported being satisfied with the hunting opportunity, while 75% reported seeing the game they were hunting and 17% reported harvesting game.

“Flathead Ridge Ranch has been a very good partner in piloting these programs,” Dugan said. “They went above and beyond for sure. And one of the benefits of the placard system is that it comes with some accountability. Landowners enrolling in our Block Management program want some assurance that the public is going to obey the rules. And writing your name down can encourage people to follow the rules and not take for granted that this is a privilege. This isn’t Forest Service public land, it’s private.”

The Joneses’ private land acquisition gained public attention in January 2021 following a succession of land sales that began a year earlier, when the Washington-based timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. announced it was selling all 630,000 acres of its remaining Montana timberland to Georgia-based Southern Pine Plantations, a private investment company. Having acquired the land in 2016 when it merged with Plum Creek Timber Company, Weyerhaeuser’s land sale, as well as its $145 million price tag, sent shockwaves across the region.

Although both Plum Creek and Weyerhaeuser had continually enrolled their timberland in FWP’s Block Management program, Southern Pine Plantations, doing business in the region as SPP Montana, raised eyebrows when it offloaded nearly a half-million acres in the first part of 2021, selling 291,000 acres to Green Diamond Resource Company, another timber group, while flipping dozens of smaller parcels to private development interests.

That left SPP Montana holding a balance of roughly 130,000 acres of timberland in a market primed for development.

Instead, they sold most of it to the Joneses.

Originally from Lethbridge, Alberta, Mark and Robyn Jones now reside in Texas, where they’ve earned a fortune building their company, Goosehead Insurance, into an industry leader. Their wealth has allowed them to lay deeper roots in the Flathead Valley, including construction of a 31,000-square-foot mansion off Big Mountain Road, on 200 acres of land adjacent to Whitefish Mountain Resort.

Combined, the land acquisitions made the Joneses the owners of 18% of Flathead County’s private parcels, a staggering real estate portfolio for a private buyer with no plans for commercial or residential development.

“For the most part, we plan to leave it much the way it is,” said Mark Jones, who describes his Flathead Valley interests as “a family legacy investment,” separate from their lucrative insurance empire. 

The Joneses’ legacy investment paid congenital dividends last hunting season when Ryan Langston, the couple’s son-in-law, who works as president of Flathead Ridge Ranch LLC, as well as general counsel of Goosehead Insurance, visited the ranch property for his teenage son’s inaugural hunt. Explaining the family’s decision to close some of the property to the public, Langston said it was to ensure a measure of unfettered privacy.

“We didn’t want to take too much of the property, because how much backyard do you really need, but we did want some privacy,” Langston said. “But our biggest priority is to conserve it. Mark has six kids and 20 grandchildren so the family will get exponentially larger over the next 20 years. And we really want to leave it in a natural state to recreate. This will be kept pristine and open, and we won’t develop it at all, at least not in my lifetime. Who knows what happens in 80 years. I won’t be around making those decisions. But in my lifetime we will not develop this property.”

To manage its timberland, Flathead Ridge Ranch hired Caleb Deitz, a local forester who’s spent the past decade working to improve the health of public and private forests in northwest Montana. His goal at Flathead Ridge Ranch isn’t to harvest a certain volume of sawlogs, but rather to promote “a more mature, more natural mix of forest age classes,” which in turn supports more diverse wildlife habitat.

“Between the work the security team is doing, and what we’re accomplishing through sustainable forestry, it seems like we have been getting more support from the public,” he said. “We’ve certainly seen an improvement in the hunting ethics on display since making these investments.”

Deitz has also helped improve wildland fire mitigation strategies and open emergency access routes for firefighters, including during the 19,000-acre Niarada Fire that torched 900 acres of Flathead Ridge Ranch property in August 2023.

“The goal for us as a family is to really rehabilitate a forest that’s been pretty heavily logged for over a hundred years,” Langston said. “That’s one reason that Caleb is on board. We’re looking at forestry from a different perspective, and we’re not necessarily using the same strategies that a commercial timber company would use. Our goal is not to turn a profit on timber, it’s to use methods like pre-commercial thinning to improve the health of the forest.”

Still, for the Joneses, the future of the public-private partnership hinges on mutual concessions and reciprocity.

“It’s always been a priority to us to be a good neighbor. But being a good neighbor is a two-way street,” Mark Jones said. “We have demonstrated our commitment by keeping so much of the area open to the public. We invested in security and safety, and I estimate that 95% of the people that come on the property and recreate, hunt, ride horses, that they are all wonderful and we are excited to host them on our property. There’s been a small group of people who have not been constructive, but the good news is that the 95% help minimize the downside of the 5%, and we appreciate that. Those guys are being good neighbors to us, and that’s an important safeguard.”

Jones acknowledged receiving a nominal amount of money from FWP in exchange for enrolling the land in the Block Management program, but that amount is capped at $50,000, which doesn’t come close to offsetting the investments the family has made since buying the property, which he described as “well into the seven figures.”

“We invest a large amount of money every year in improving roadways, nursing the forest back to health, security, outreach to the community,” Jones said. “That stuff doesn’t happen on its own. You have to make it happen and it all costs money.”

“This is a property that we want to be a legacy family investment, and that means making the asset as sustainable as we can,” Jones continued. “We just view it as part of our responsibility as stewards of the land.”

Dillon Tabish, FWP’s regional information and education program manager, said it’s encouraging to see a large landowner take such an interest in the Block Management program, enrollment in which has declined in recent years.

“We really want to do everything we can to protect that access, but it goes both ways,” Tabish said, explaining that the agency is working to establish more trust and respect between private landowners and the recreating public. To raise awareness about private land access and promote land stewardship and etiquette, he said FWP has partnered with the University of Montana and Montana State University on a campaign whose slogan is: “It’s Up to Us. Respect Access. Protect The Hunt.”

“These lands have been open for a century, and people feel like they are entitled to them,” Tabish said. “And we have heard some complaints of roads being gated or restricted. But we are trying to get hunters to realize we are not entitled to access this area; it’s a privilege and it could all go away. It’s pretty rare to be able to access 100,000 acres of deer and elk habitat within a 30-minute drive from town. We’re fortunate. Because it’s not guaranteed.”

Jim Williams was working as FWP’s regional supervisor in Kalispell when news of the Joneses’ private land purchase reached agency headquarters four years ago. Having spent much of the previous two decades crafting large, landscape-scale conservation easements to protect hundreds of thousands of acres in northwest Montana for wildlife habitat and recreational access, Williams sprung into action and brokered a meeting with the new landowners.

Although Jones showed little appetite for entering into a conservation easement, Williams said he came across as sincere about his intentions to let the land rest, and he took immediate steps to enroll his acreage in the Block Management program.

“Fortunately for northwest Montana we started dedicating time on these access and habitat conservation easements over 20 years ago,” Williams said. “Prior to that we had been investing time and money into wildlife research, which was critical to agency decision making, but we had no idea at the time what was coming in the form of unprecedented development pressure in Montana. Fast forward to the crush of humanity that showed up here five years ago. Had we not done all of the hard relationship building and fundraising work and completed all of the large landscape easements up here that kept logging on the landscape … we would be in big trouble today.”

Although Williams conceded that without permanent protections a question mark lingers over the long-range future of Flathead Ridge Ranch, he said “they have been amenable to access so folks have to really respect their concerns and their land to keep hunting access as a plausible property management option for the family.”

Jones said he understands why some segments of the public would want the guaranteed access that a conservation easement enshrines. However, ticking through a list of local contributions he’s made in the past year, Jones added that a conservation easement would not have included access improvements like wayfinding signs, display kiosks, garbage removal, or road maintenance. It wouldn’t have included donations to the Wildland Firefighters Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, or the Flathead County Sheriff’s Posse.

“Our specific case is a little different because we bought the land to conserve it, not to develop it,” he said. “We are not in the land development business, and we do not have financial pressures, such as debt, that other buyers may have had. For us it’s pretty simple: follow our access rules, which are very consistent with those in place historically, and we are happy to allow the public, on lands that are open, to enjoy our property. We want to be good neighbors, contributing to the community; we just ask the public to reciprocate.”

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