By Suzanne Adams-Ockrassa | Kingman Daily Miner
After battling for five years to rebuild and move Diamond Bar Road off of his property, Grand Canyon Ranch Resort owner Nigel Turner now wants traffic to return to the old alignment of Diamond Bar Road that crosses his land.
Turner wrote two letters this week to the BLM’s Kingman Field Office and to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Phoenix office appealing the BLM’s decision to allow the Hualapai Tribal Council to build a dirt road to bypass the old alignment of Diamond Bar Road on his property. The tribe started construction on a new paved alignment of Diamond Bar Road in April. It asked for permission to use part of the unfinished road to bypass Turner’s property in May after he started charging motorists a fee to use the old road alignment. He closed the road to all traffic on June 4. It was reopened to traffic, with an entrance fee on June 11.
In his letters, Turner claims that the bypass is costing him $50,000 a day in revenue and it’s unnecessary, unsafe and is damaging the environment. He also claims the U.S. Bureau of Land Management never notified him of the tribal council’s request for a bypass, even though he owns the grazing rights to the land.
