OWENS TWP— Dorothy Easterday’s official property address is 9175 Derusha Rd. in Owens Township. But whether it is Derusha Rd. or not is a question that has mired this small township outside of Cook in a longstanding battle that shows no sign of easing.
Easterday has been wrestling with township officials over the issue for several years, ever since her neighbor, Jerald Koenck, blocked half of the road beyond his driveway by installing a fence. Easterday tore out the fence, which prompted Koenck to call the sheriff. Deputies advised her to contact an attorney and when she did, he advised her to go to the town board for a resolution.
But Easterday’s pleas to the town board to restore the usual road access she enjoyed for years apparently found little traction and the town board has treated the road past her neighbor’s as non-existent ever since.
That apparent decision ended the township’s previous willingness to maintain the road and pay St. Louis County to plow snow past Koenck’s driveway.
Meanwhile, Koenck has since replaced his former fence with a lineup of old cars and logs, which has significantly narrowed the roadway, limiting access particularly in the winter.
The details of the dispute, including when the town board made key decisions in the matter, are obscured by the fact that the township clerk, Shirley Woods, has refused to provide the Timberjay with access to town board minutes or other records. Woods did provide a statement to the Timberjay, which states that the town board heard an opinion from the township attorney on Sept. 10, 2019, that she said confirmed that the south half of the road is private property, belonging to Koenck, who purchased the property in 2015. But Woods refused to provide the name of the attorney.
In addition, Woods has not provided records that might explain how or exactly when the town board determined that Derusha Rd. would no longer exist past Koenck’s driveway.
Easterday said the full-width road used to extend just past her garage, and school buses used her driveway as a turnaround point. In the winter, county plows would come past her house.
“The township used to take care of it,” she said. “The plow would come all the way up and plow right by my garage and then back down. As a matter of fact, they used to make a couple of swipes.”
Easterday now has to hire someone to clear the snow from the narrowed section of the road leading to her house.
Easterday also said there used to be a school on her property, which she suggested supports the claim that the road extended to her property.
“How else did they get the kids up there?” she said.
Located southeast of the city of Cook, Derusha Rd. extends west from the 90-degree turn where Johnson Rd. turns from a north-south route to east-west. Recent aerial photography shows Derusha Rd. at a standard two-lane width until about 125 feet east of Easterday’s driveway, where it now narrows to a single lane. Beyond Easterday’s garage, the roadway appears unmaintained but has provided access to about 70 acres of pasture land that was, until recently, cut for hay. Easterday said Derusha Rd. used to continue another mile to the west where it once connected to Olson Rd. “Olson Rd. and Derusha Road used to be connected because the number on both of those roads is the same number,” she said.
The Timberjay checked St. Louis County’s website for an Owens Township map and confirmed that the two roads share the same numerical designation, 4505.
It appears the dispute arose sometime after Koenck purchased his property. According to Easterday, he had the land surveyed, which he apparently believes gives him ownership of the south half of the road and justification for blocking his half of it, beginning just beyond his driveway. Easterday acknowledges that Koenck’s roadblock does not appear to go over his property line, but it would likely be within the road right-of-way if the road was created, as county records indicate.
According to Woods, the township attorney was present at the 2019 meeting acting as legal assistance for the township. “He told the constituents that the land involved in the dispute was not township land and that the residents must work the dispute out among themselves. He suggested a meeting of the parties to discuss easements. All parties were in favor of this and indicated they would meet as soon as possible,” Woods said.
Easterday said she’s heard an even more direct statement about the status of the road from the township.
“Now they’re saying it wasn’t a road,” Easterday said. “But nobody seems to be able to find the proof of that.”
“I really wouldn’t care if he wanted to pile his garbage there,” Easterday continued, referencing her neighbor. “Just move it over five feet so I can have the road there. In the wintertime, it gets kind of tough because of the snow and because of the vehicles.”
“The township is not extending the end of that dead end to engulf my property, which is only about 100 feet,” Easterday said. “I live off the end of that road and they cut me off. That’s my complaint.”
Documentation?
Easterday isn’t the only one affected by the situation. Doyle Svedberg, who was elected to the town board in 2022 said he’s in the process of buying the pasture land beyond Easterday’s house from a cousin, and the current narrow road configuration won’t allow large farm equipment or semi-trucks needed to harvest and haul the hay to pass through.
“There’s no way I can get to it, I just can’t,” Svedberg said.
Both Easterday and Svedberg said they’d talked with Koenck about getting an easement but were unable to secure an agreement.
However, Svedberg’s research into the issue has turned up a document filed with the county that he says proves Derusha Rd. was officially established by the township back in 1925. Titled “Supervisors’ Road Order and Award of Damages,” the order was filed by the Owens Town Clerk with the county auditor and contains a legal description that corresponds with the layout of Derusha Rd. and connecting with Olson Rd.
“My knowledge of road orders is that they’re like a birth certificate. It lays out the road,” Svedberg said.
Svedberg said he consulted an attorney who told him that if the process described in law for closing a road has not been done, “the road order stands.”
Svedberg suggested the assertion that the road didn’t exist runs counter to the fact that it continues to be maintained and reaches the properties of Koenck and Lisa Ollikkala, Easterday’s daughter, who lives next door to her.
“If there was no road, then why did you let (Koenck) have a road but not Dorothy?” Svedberg said. “And why are you maintaining that road? That’s my big question. Why is the road there if there was no road? Is that fair to Dorothy? That’s total discrimination if (Koenck) can have the road but Dorothy can’t.”
Operating under the premise that the road did not exist, as implied in Woods’s statement, a previous town board apparently believed that no formal road vacation process was necessary to terminate Derusha Rd. short of Easterday’s property.
Svedberg said that the unmaintained portion of the road has a solid roadbed, as evidenced by its past use for hauling hay. He said it could be opened with a minimum maintenance designation, which would relieve the township from any associated costs.
“What I’m anchoring this all on is a road order that was written in 1925,” Svedberg said. “Nothing has been laid on top of it. Now if there was a vacating order on it, it would definitely be at the recorder’s office. But there’s nothing.”
The Timberjay contacted St. Louis County Deputy Recorder requesting a copy of any closure order for Derusha Rd., required by law to be filed by the township with her office, but none was found in county records.
Another possible ally for Easterday in her battle is current town supervisor Mike Christensen, who was appointed last year to fill a vacancy on the board. Christensen said he was asked to talk to Easterday about the issue.
“They wanted me to go talk to Dorothy and calm her down about this, because they thought she was going to call the newspaper or a lawyer,” Christensen said. “They told me to tell her this was a done deal, just tell her that what is done is done and there is no road there. Well, I started digging into it and I talked to her and then I saw, well, there’s another side to this story.”
“I came to find out the way they closed this road was they just decreed between township board members that there was never a road there,” Christensen said. “That’s what they told me, and so basically there was nothing to close. The public was never notified that this was happening. They just did it. The landowners should have been told.”
Christensen also discussed the road order, noting that it specifies a width of four rods, or 66 feet, and it lists six landowners that were due “damages,” or compensation for the land used for the road.
“If you’re paying for right-of-way, the only reason you pay for right-of-way is if you’re putting in a road,” Christensen said.
The listing indicates that the “advantages and benefits said road will confer upon them are equal to all damages sustained by them,” so no money was paid out to the landowners.
Christensen noted the road issue also affects another piece of property west of Easterday, one county records show is owned by Daniel and Harold Baumgartner.
“This Baumgartner who owns this property, he’s cut off, too,” Christensen said. “He would like to sell that property, and he’s kind of screwed right now because he doesn’t have access to it anymore.”
The only option to access the properties to the west of Easterday other than to reopen Derusha Rd. would be for the township to take steps to clear and make roadworthy the southern part of Olson Rd., Christensen said.
“It would cost the township a lot more money to open that up, and it’s not a rich township,” Christensen said. “I just kind of hate to do that to the people in the township where the other one is pretty easy.”
Use makes it a road?
It’s possible, given a particular set of circumstances, that the mere existence and use of the full-width roadway to Easterday’s house is sufficient enough to formally establish it as an extension of Derusha Rd., according to information from the Minnesota Association of Townships (MAT) discovered online by the Timberjay.
“An Overview of the Creation and Extinguishment of Town Roads,” a 14-page document written for MAT by attorney Troy J. Gilchrist, contains a section on how roads are created simply through continuous use and maintenance, as authorized by state law.
Minnesota Statute 160.05 reads in part:
“When any road or portion of a road has been used and kept in repair and worked for at least six years continuously as a public highway by a road authority, it shall be deemed dedicated to the public to the width of actual use and be and remain, until lawfully vacated, a public highway whether it has ever been established as a public highway or not.”
Gilchrist wrote, “The amount of public use required is relatively small. In one case, the court placed emphasis on the fact that a road was open for use by the public rather than on the amount the public actually used the road.”
Maintenance of the road by the township comparable to that for similar types of roads over a period of six years must be demonstrated for the law to apply. Gilchrist cited a court case which found that “It is not necessary that every part of a road be worked at government expense or that any particular part receive attention every year of this six-year period.”
“If the character of the road is such that infrequent maintenance during the year is all that is necessary to maintain the road for the purposes for which it is used (e.g. access to a cultivated field), the infrequent maintenance over at least six years will likely be found to satisfy the timing element,” Gilchrist wrote.
While the statute may be relevant to the Derusha Rd. controversy, litigation would likely be necessary to determine if it would apply in this specific situation.
Both Christensen and Svedberg said that having the process done correctly is a major concern.
“Mike and I are on the same page – let’s do it right,” Svedberg said.
In another wrinkle to the story, Svedberg alleged that Easterday was turned away from the town board’s May meeting.
“She made a request to be at the meeting. When I was on my way there, Dorothy was pulling out. A day or two later I asked Dorothy ‘How come you left the meeting?’” Svedberg said. “She says well, the chairman came out and told her you’re not allowed to come inside, you’re going to have to leave. You’re not allowed at the meeting. I talked to the attorneys, and they said that’s a violation of the Open Meeting Law.”
Svedberg said he’d like to see the issue resolved soon.
“We have to put the past behind us,” he said. “I’m not here to point fingers at the old board. I just want to move ahead and do things proper. If the previous board made a mistake, they made a mistake. We’re not going to get anywhere grinding up this thing over and over. Let’s make sure Dorothy has access. Let’s get the access for those other properties.”
“What’s been done is not right,” Christensen said. “And we still have two owners on the road with no access to their property. We’re mostly concerned for the immediate time now in getting the road open for Dorothy, because this is a horrible thing.”
Editor’s note: The Timberjay called Owens Town Clerk Shirley Woods twice trying to obtain information about the township’s position regarding the Derusha Rd. issue, but Woods refused to comment for the record, instead providing only the statement reported above. The Timberjay also tried to find a phone number to contact Mr. Koenck, but the number listed as current for him on the USPhoneBook website belonged to another individual. The Timberjay did not try using any of several numbers listed as previous numbers.