Popular recreation area may need more attention in the future

BUTTE -- The wheels of Mark Adams' hefty pickup truck grind wrathfully as they grip the muddy ground en route to Jim Creek. Adams is a natural resource specialist for the Department of Natural Resources, and several times every year he, along with Justin Selvik, his colleague, drives through the creek area searching for discarded cars, trucks and other pieces of trash deposited there.

Smith, on a trip to the area Friday, said he finds about 25 to 30 destroyed cars in the area each year. In the past, a National Guard helicopter helped to move out 150 to 200 vehicles each spring.

Smith and Selvik spent the morning poking and prying inquisitively at the collection of rusted hulks cluttering the creek. They were searching for license plates and vehicle identification numbers that would allow them to track down the owners of the destroyed cars and trucks. Among the 14 vehicles found Friday afternoon were a Lincoln towncar, a Ford Bronco and a battered Cadillac. The vehicles were commonly so badly damaged by fire and shotgun blasts that no identification numbers were visible, and Smith said that the process of contacting owners was often futile anyway, since many of the cars were stolen or of dubious ownership, but he had a few success stories to tell.

In addition to the destroyed vehicles and miscellaneous litter, several trees in the area had been cut down and burned in bonfires. Though Smith said that using Jim Creek for recreational shooting is legal if proper precautions are taken, wanton tree cutting is certainly not.

A typical round of afternoon cleanups conducted by Smith, Selvik and a DNR truck can transport more than two truckbeds of trash from the area. This trash often includes Visqueen, paint supplies, chemicals and other materials that require a landfill permit to deposit.

"It's amazing how much accumulates each year," Selvik said. "If this spreads much further, it'll start to hurt tourism."

"They just trash that place," said Dwight Grossnickel, owner of Grizzly Towing and Wrecking. "It's that simple."

Smith said DNR agreed to enter into a contract with Grizzly Towing and Wrecking to remove any destroyed cars found during the drive-through at a cost of $75 per car. He added that Grossnickel's price was the most affordable estimate he had received when comparing prices offered by assorted Valley wrecking companies, and he was confident that Grizzly would do a good job.

"Dwight has done this many times," Smith said.

Grossnickel added that it wasn't just intentional destruction that was to blame for the huge volume of debris left out at Jim Creek, saying that many residents get stuck along the unmaintained road to the creek or in the muddy and hazardous sands at the creek itself, go for help, and return to find their vehicle vandalized.

"It scares me to death," said a hunter driving a mud-spattered Honda four-wheeler across the glacial flats. The man had left his truck parked near the entrance to the Jim Creek access road and feared that it would be vandalized.

Smith said he believes most residents in the area appreciated the relaxed system of enforcement surrounding Jim Creek, but deplored the mess that tended to accumulate in the area.

"They want to clean the area up, but don't want to be hampered by any more restrictions and red tape," he said. "But I'm not sure if it can stay that way forever."

Since Smith is employed by DNR, he was only surveying lands controlled by the state during his Friday drive-through. The Mat-Su Borough also owns a considerable portion of the lands in the creek area. Smith said any efforts to further control the recreational use -- and abuse -- of the creek would thus require cooperation between the state and the borough.

The two governing agencies might consider turning Jim Creek into a special-use area, which would place tighter regulations on such activities as shooting and littering in the area. However, Smith stressed the importance of having the borough's cooperation.

"It has to be a total joint effort to make this happen," he said.

Selvik added that a special-use area wouldn't necessarily restrict access or otherwise impede recreation in the area.

"It just means that the place is managed differently," he said. "It can be whatever people want it to be."

Any efforts to police the Jim Creek area would be extremely difficult, Smith said, due in part to the large area and volume of visitors and in part to the fact that the majority of problems in the vicinity occur during the early hours of the morning.

The DNR staff is perpetually short-staffed, according to Smith, and has approximately 30 workers covering 60 million acres of land. A regular presence in the area is thus difficult to maintain.

"We have a lot of things to worry about," Smith said, "but we definitely try to make it out here from time to time."

"It's a beautiful area with easy access," said Selvik. "It's just a few people who are messing it up."

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.