WASHINGTON - Boulder County, Colo., resident AJ Chamberlin thought she was protecting her rights when she blocked access to a dirt track that snakes across the middle of her 28-acre mountainside property.

Instead, she started a battle over the old mining road. Neighbors fought back, arguing the track was a county road under an obscure 1866 law allowing local governments to claim rights of way across federal land.

They said they had jogged, birded and motorbiked there years before the Chamberlins moved in and could document public use back to the turn of the 20th century.

The dispute got nasty. Someone removed the post holding Chamberlin's gate and scrawled an expletive on her no trespassing sign. She barricaded the road with an old truck.

Three years later, despite appeals for help to the courts and the county, the neighbors are still divided. And no one is completely sure who owns the road.

"It was a peaceful place," said neighbor Walter Plywaski. "It isn't now."

Chamberlin's experience now is being used by advocates for change as an example of the problems caused by the old mining law, known as Revised Statute 2477. Thousands of tracks and paths crisscross the West, but deciding what is a road has become a tricky proposition.

So many similar skirmishes have flared up in recent years that Chamberlin and others say Congress or the courts must help states and local governments or they will be forced to spend millions of dollars resolving road disputes.

"It's just going to continue to be a thorn in the side of local communities until Congress is ready to act," Leslie Lacy, an assistant Boulder County attorney. "It'd be great if we could get a good bill now."

Breeding distrust

R.S. 2477 was originally intended to help settle the West and its vast public land. It was repealed in 1976, but counties were allowed to claim ownership of rights of way that existed before then if they could show they had roadlike qualities.

Over the years, population growth, the increasing popularity of off-road vehicle tourism and long-standing distrust among ranchers, environmentalists and the federal government have led to more and more conflicts. Problems have occurred in New Mexico, California, Colorado, Alaska and Nevada.

Some cases involve roads that cross private land that was once public. Chamberlin's property, for example, started as a mining claim on federal land.

In other cases, the counties themselves are using the law to assert claims.

The biggest conflict may be in Kane County, Utah, home to millions of acres of striking red rock canyons, national parks and the newly created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Kane County ranchers have long lived uneasily with the federal government, and the Clinton-era designation of the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase monument rankled many locals.

When a Bureau of Land Management plan for the monument closed several byways, which the county considered local roads, officials complained the federal government was overreaching.

Frustrated by what they considered to be an unsatisfactory response from the BLM, county commissioners decided to try to provoke a lawsuit, which they hoped would result in the federal government recognizing their roads.

In 2003, they tore down more than 30 BLM signs over what they considered county roads. When that didn't work, they passed an ordinance earlier this year opening to off-road vehicles tracks, paths and even streambeds on federal land throughout the county - including some in Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks and the Grand Staircase.

That also failed to move the Interior Department to sue. But it prompted a frenzied response from environmentalists, who called it a modern Sagebrush Rebellion and sued the county in October. The groups argue Kane officials violated the Constitution's supremacy clause.

Utah BLM spokesman Don Banks said the federal government and the state are working through the issue, following recent court decisions.

But environmentalists fear Kane County's road claims will set a precedent throughout the West, opening protected federal land to gas drills and ATVs and forever thwarting the creation of future wilderness areas.

They accuse the Interior Department of dragging its feet over the issue.

"It's not about transportation, it's about who is going to control the fate of federal lands," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "And in southern Utah, we're talking about some of the most spectacularly beautiful landscapes in the country."

Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw said the county isn't interested in pursuing claims to roads in the national parks. But he said the county needs other roads to access mines, traditional hunting camps and water sources.

Officials also are watching nearby communities make millions of dollars from off-road vehicle enthusiasts, who Habbeshaw argues have a right to use public lands just like hikers.

"We can't sit idly by while the federal government … takes management actions to just close the roads against the needs of the county," Habbeshaw said.

Vague definition

In its latest decision this fall on another Utah road case, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Utah counties have to prove 10 years of continuous use to claim a road under R.S. 2477. But many observers feel the definition is still vague.

They also wonder whether it will create more problems in other states, which have different legal standards for roads. Old Colorado court decisions, for example, have suggested use by a single miner is enough to create a road claim.

"That would be a nightmare," said Lacy, the Boulder County attorney.

Chamberlin and other property rights advocates have teamed with environmentalists and are lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would set standards to govern R.S. 2477 claims.

Boulder County has backed a bill first filed in 2003 by Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., that would give anyone claiming a road six years to prove it is a public right of way. But Udall has been unable to get a hearing scheduled to discuss the issue, and the bill has languished.

If things continue as they are, Udall said, "all you're going to get is a lot more litigation. It seems like an enormous waste of time."

In Chamberlin's community, neighbors have called each other names, gotten restraining orders and provoked fights over access to the road.

Chamberlin, a real estate agent, says she's worried about the cost of going to court, but she fears she won't be able to sell the property with a public road on it.

"I don't want anyone else to go through what we have had to go through," she said.