Opinion ID: 1323824
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 36

Heading: old route unsuitable

Text: The new road is what brought Selmet into the picture, according to E. M. Olliver, supervisor of the Forest Service at Elkins. He told the Daily Mail that an engineering survey showed the present road to Spruce Knob, where Painter bought his property from Selmet, would not be suitable for traffic when the new complex is completed. If it is any consolation to Painter, Olliver also said that improvements of the old road to the standards sought by the service would have required the taking of his property anyway. However, Olliver continued, the survey showed the best location of a road to the Knob is a short distance north of the Painter property, on Blizzard Run. The Blizzard Run property provides the necessary width, alignment and grade needed for the new road, Olliver said, and added, that's when we went to Selmet. He did not know who Selmet was, he said, because the corporation was not registered at the secretary of state's office in Charleston. But Wilson Smith, a motel operator and Sprouse supporter in the current political campaign, came to the Forest Service in January, 1967, and offered the 1,385 acre tract. The property, according to Olliver, includes the site of the new road, on the western side of the highway, some bottomland, and another tract on the eastern side of the highway, above the bottomland and far from the forest boundaries. The Forest Service did not want all of that land, Olliver said, but Selmet refused to sell what the service wanted unless it took it all. Why didn't the Forest Service condemn what it wanted, without taking the land on the opposite side of the highway? We didn't have to condemn, Olliver replied, because it was a case of willing seller and willing buyer. But Olliver and his property manager also disclosed that the Selmet property it did want, for the road, was not in the forest boundaries, which had to be extended to cover that property before it could be purchased. The property on the other side of the highway, which it also had to buy, is not in the forest boundary. Its purchase was justified by Olliver, who said it qualifies for government purchase because it is suitable for national forest purposes. The U. S. Forest Service did not have the available funds to buy the Selmet property, Olliver said, so it turned to Nature Conservancy, Inc., of Washington, D. C. This is a non-profit organization of conservationists who buy land wanted by the federal government for parks and other purposes and hold it until the government agency has the money to buy it back. The Forest Service is now in the process of getting the land from Nature Conservancy, Olliver said, and will pay what Nature Conservancy paid to Selmet, plus any expenses Nature Conservancy incurred in the purchase. Selmet conveyed the 1,385 acres to Nature Conservancy Oct. 7, 1968, for $81,364. Robert Hedrick of Elkins signed as president of Selmet, with Smith as vice president, according to the deed on record at the courthouse in Franklin.