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Carver's political epiphany occurred at 3 a.m. one day in October 1993, well after he became a commissioner. He was writing a letter protesting Rangeland Reform '94, then newly proposed. "It was like someone turned on a switch," Carver says. At Wayne Hage's urging, he had already studied how Catron County, New Mexico, which pioneered the county rebellion in the early 1990s, had asserted its authority over federal lands within its borders. Carver recalls asking himself, "Why am I responding to Bruce Babbitt on Rangeland Reform when in fact the state of Nevada owns the land?" He successfully lobbied his fellow commissioners to pass Nye's own version of the so-called Catron Ordinances. But Carver wanted more. Other counties had passed such resolutions but had not tried to enforce them, thus leaving them with no more punch than a letter to the editor. He wanted a fight. "We knew we had to take some action," he says.
HE FOUND HIS BATTLEFIELD. The county had petitioned the Forest Service to reopen a former stagecoach trail, known as the Jefferson Canyon Road, that linked Carver's Big Smoky Valley with Hage's Monitor Valley. The Forest Service said an archaeological survey would first need to be done. But Carver wanted to open the road right away, without the agency's approval--his way of firing a shot across the government's bow. With the blessings of his fellow commissioners, he set the event for Independence Day.
DAWN BROKE ON THE D-7 CATERPILLAR draped in an American flag. Carver had asked the county's public-works director to choose the most expendable of the county's earthmovers in case the Forest Service impounded it. Carver fired it up and began shaving the land along the existing right-of-way, then stopped for a brief ceremony. A large crowd had gathered in the canyon, no mean feat considering its inaccessibility. Carver's son-in-law sang the national anthem. People showed up whom Carver had known in grade school but had not seen since. "I got so emotional," he says, "there were tears running down my face."
Two forest officials arrived, David Young, a law-enforcement agent, and David Grider, then the district ranger. When the crowd saw that Young was armed, some 50 people--by Carver's count--strapped on their own handguns. Carver saw Grider talking into his radio and wondered if other agents had massed below. "I thought this was going to be a mini-Waco," he says.
A sheriff's deputy climbed aboard the Cat to address the crowd and urged everyone to be civil. But a local rancher also climbed aboard and declared that peaceful solutions were no longer enough.
Carver began driving again. Young did not interfere until Carver began plowing a roadbed outside the existing right-of-way. He stepped suddenly in front of the bulldozer and unfurled a sign stating STOP--DISTURBANCE NOT AUTHORIZED. But Carver kept going, at one point brandishing his Constitution. "At no time was [Young] ever in danger," Carver insists. "He stumbled once, but I wasn't going to run him over."