When Dick Nelson goes to get the mail, the trip usually ends up as some sort of adventure. These outings bring Nelson in close proximity with his wild neighbors, including one incidence last October, when Nelson encountered four wolves during the 200-yard trek from his front gate.
These encounters are part of what makes his land on Good Creek in Olney so special. And to keep it this way, Nelson and his wife Carol decided to protect the land’s character by putting 300 acres in a conservation easement.
“My feeling about the place has always been that it should be left as untouched as possible, especially the 300 acres in the easement,” Nelson said last week. “I just felt that for the place to be taken over by a developer and broken up into smaller lots would be just awful.”
A conservation easement keeps the land in private ownership, but puts restrictions on future uses. For the Nelsons’ property, this means there can be no houses or other development on the land, which contains bears, elk, moose, mountain lions, beavers, coyotes, river otters, eagles, turkeys and, of course, wolves.
The acreage is idyllic, said Brad Seaman of the Flathead Land Trust.
“It’s a wonderful piece of property, it really has everything that you could think about in Montana,” Seaman said.
Ryan Hunter and Stacy Allen of FLT worked with the Nelsons to negotiate the easement – a lengthy legal process that amounts in phonebook-sized piles of documents, Seaman said.
The easement will allow field trips and educational tours as future uses, which will be a large benefit for the community, Seaman added. The Nelsons also decided to keep a parcel of 50 acres out of the easement to provide a place for the family to build on in the future.
Nelson purchased the property in 1969 after reading an advertisement about 350 Montana acres for sale in the entertainment magazine, Daily Variety. Nelson was living in Los Angeles, where he had a successful career as a writer for multiple television shows, including Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Falcon Crest and Dynasty.
He had been on hunting trips in Montana and thought he might want to retire there someday. After flying up to take a look at the property, Nelson bought the land for $45,000. He and Carol moved to Montana full-time in 1988.
“I came here and just fell in love with this place as many people who come to the Flathead do,” Carol Nelson said.
Located 14 miles northwest of Whitefish, the land is surrounded by Flathead National Forest and includes more than a mile of Good Creek. The Nelsons also gave FTL permission to use the value of the easement to match with North American Wetlands Conservation Act funding, a donation that will allow FTL to put more dollars toward more easements in the Flathead, Seaman said.
The easement will also help the Nelsons with their goal of keeping the property in the family. Nelson noted that the current property value, which the Nelsons preferred not to disclose, was much higher than the 1969 purchase price. The property valuation decreases with an easement, meaning the family will be able to keep the acreage in future generations.
“It’s a way to bring the value down to make estate taxes manageable,” Nelson said.
But the overarching desire is to keep the land wild and natural. And while most of the family is on board with the decision, Nelson said some friends have voiced concern about the idea of land remaining the same in perpetuity.
“Some of our conservative friends think that’s kind of controlling from the grave or something like that, but that’s too bad,” Nelson said with a laugh.