Development of a controversial glamping retreat along the Gallatin River advanced last week after a county official approved a floodplain permit for the project.
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Geologist Jerry Zieg grew up next to the Smith River in central Montana, on the ranch his family has owned for five generations. The river irrigated their land. He learned to fish from its pristine bounty of westslope cutthroat trout. The river’s russet canyon walls, with 1,000-year-old pictographs drawn by the Besant and Avonlea peoples, were what first inspired his fascination with geology. Later, when he married his wife, the two floated the Smith for their honeymoon. “My family sold the part right on the river in the mid-Eighties, but I still have the rest of that land where I grew up on the Smith,” he says proudly.
Opposition to a vacation rental development in Gallatin Gateway is growing.
Local landowners have partnered with several conservation groups to form Protect the Gallatin River, a new nonprofit that organized a petition against the Riverbend Glamping Resort and urged people to voice their opposition to the Gallatin County Planning Department.
The creation of Protect the Gallatin River came just before the planning department closed the public comment period on Monday for the floodplain permit.
The planning department received 334 comments as well as the petition from Protect the Gallatin River, which included 1,062 signatures and 255 comments, said Director Sean OâCallaghan.
Only a few of the comments were in support of the development.