McFarland

We are asked to decide whether a landowner can prove that he has an easement over a federally-owned road to his property within Glacier National Park in Montana and whether the National Park Service arbitrarily and capriciously denied his request for a special use permit to use the road during the winter time.

I

In 1916, Charles F.W. Schoenberger received title under the Homestead Act to an 89-acre parcel in Montana. The parcel was within the boundaries of the Glacier National Park and was used as a year-round subsistence homestead. In 1984, John James McFarland purchased a 2.75-acre portion of Schoenberger’s land. McFarland’s portion, and, indeed, the entirety of the original Schoenberger homestead, is accessible via a road, in existence since 1901, known within Glacier National Park as the North Fork Road, the Inner North Fork Road, or Glacier Route 7. The National Park Service owns and maintains Glacier Route 7, a portion of which, beginning at the Polebridge Ranger Station and running north 3 miles, provides the only vehicular access to the original Schoenber-ger homestead, including McFarland’s portion of it. Another possible means of access is across the North Fork of the…