× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

A federal judge on Monday issued an order that keeps a popular hiking trail near Ennis open for public access – contrary to an out-of-state landowner’s contention that it wasn’t public.

The case concerns the Indian Creek Trail in the west foothills of the Madison Range. The trail provides public access into the Lee Metcalf Wilderness.

The Wonder Ranch claimed that the trail, which traverses its 80-acre parcel south of Cameron, was used by the public because of the landowner’s “gratuitous’’ permission, and that no public right of access existed.

Judge Sam E. Haddon, in a 35-page ruling filed in Butte district court, disagreed.

He said the court found that ample precedent exists in Montana law to uphold the Forest Service’s and public’s prescriptive right of access for Trail No. 328, and that the right had been established no later than 1973.

The case arose in 2014, when the Wonder Ranch, LLC, owned by the Hudson family of Dallas, Texas, in some form since 1968, sued the United States under the Quiet Title Act, saying no public right of access existed.