Real-estate speculator Tom Chapman has long thrived on threats.

His threats to bulldoze roads for a community on the rim of Black Canyon along the Gunnison River. Threats to build helicopter-access luxury homes in the heart of wilderness areas. Threats to burn down famed mining structures to make room for mansions. Threats to close off recreational access.

Over the years, federal and local officials have caved and paid his price before anything gets built.

This time, he has moved beyond brinkmanship and built a 4,700-square-foot luxury home, now for sale, on 33 acres atop the south rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Last week, he sold 79 acres inside the park to an out-of-state buyer in an undisclosed deal.

The Black Canyon home marks Chapman’s return, after a break of several years, to high- end, high-stakes development on islands within public land.

He’s foreclosing on a conservation-minded buyer who acquired 19 of Chapman’s wilderness parcels in Colorado in 2007 and says he will again market the remote acres as home sites.

He also vows to block skiers and hikers on land he owns in a popular backcountry drainage next to Telluride ski area.

“I’m a private-property advocate and a capitalist, for which I would never apologize,” Chapman said in a statement. “My job is to represent landowners whose Fifth Amendment private-property rights have been abused by vote-seeking politicians, overzealous regulators and an environmental community that consistently shows little to no respect for private-property rights.”

Chapman’s David-vs.-Goliath soliloquy sounds like it comes from the front porch of his besieged family’s homestead. But that’s not the case.

The 60-year-old Paonia native seeks out Colorado landowners with parcels inside federally protected lands. He finds investors — such as the TDX investment group from Alabama — that pay those owners well above appraised values for remote, seemingly undevelopable plots.

Then come the promises of palaces — and the pristine parcels become pawns in a dare- me-to-build real-estate game. Chapman, who said he chose to build on the rim of Black Canyon after federal officials rebuffed his repeated pleas to trade the park property for public lands near Las Vegas and Rifle, has grown calloused to accusations of being a “bad capitalist.”

“Of course, (my accusers) can’t be bothered by the fact that the Park Service came along and surrounded the place in 2000, with the supreme arrogance it takes to do so and not even ask the landowner if they might like to be included in a national park,” Chapman said. “The federal government approach to creating wilderness inholdings is the same: Screw the landowners. Surround them; deal with the consequences later.”

Chapman elevates those consequences. It’s an unlikable but legal strategy that in the past quarter century has earned Chapman and his clients millions.

A profit of $3.5 million

In 1993, Chapman burned a log home he was building on a private parcel inside the West Elk wilderness and swapped the land for 107 Forest Service acres above Telluride, which he promptly sold for a $3.5 million profit.

“Basically, he has a game of extortion going on, and the more that agencies or private landowners play into that, the more successful he is,” said Hil ary White, executive director of the Sheep Mountain Alliance, which works to protect the high country around Telluride. “We don’t play that game with him, and nobody is going to be too interested anymore. More people are aware of his schemes, so they don’t work anymore.”

Chapman knows that cold shoulder. Before beginning construction on the Black Canyon home in 2005 — dubbed “Casa Barranca” — Chapman said he sent letters to all of Colorado’s congressional delegates, state legislators, the director of the Park Service and “about 20” state and national conservation organizations. He said the letters asked for input in finding “nondevelopment solutions” for the Black Canyon lands.

“The response was a large, ominous silence. Not one person, not one politician and not one conservation organization could find the time to respond,” Chapman said. “No one cares one iota about this magnificent canyon. The Park Service drove by (the construction project) every day. Their efforts at preserving these lands have been feckless, an embarrassment. They have expressed zero interest in protecting these lands — hiding behind their ancient ‘Let-us-steal- your-land’ appraisal . . . and a forlorn ‘What can we do now?’ lament expressed now.”

Each of his most controversial deals, Chapman said, involved “a prior abused landowner, abused by the purveyors of the public’s interest.”

Chapman is very private, rarely speaks publicly and is seldom photographed. He lives near Delta, enjoys ballroom dancing and occasionally plays piano at retirement homes and high school dances. He bristles at the notion of defending the real-estate deals he has brokered with the government — deals once labeled by former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell as “taxpayer terrorism.”

He is certainly a clever broker, able to finagle the highest price possible for overlooked land. It’s when those lonely parcels suddenly become important — when acreage is eyed for a national park, when conservation groups target land for protection or when businesses such as ski resorts plot potential expansions — that Chapman pounces.

“We knew that he could be one of the outcomes,” said Bob Risch, who in 1998 helped form the Red Mountain Project to corral historic mining structures atop Red Mountain Pass into federal protection. The effort lured Chapman, whose clients scooped up the region’s famous Yankee Girl mining structure and, after a land swap with the Forest Service failed, announced plans to bulldoze the iconic head frame to make room for a client’s home.

“Every mining claim we purchased and added to national forest, it sort of enhanced the value of nearby mining claims,” Risch said. “There are people for whom the dollar is the bottom line. They don’t have really any kind of altruistic streak. We have had people flat-out donate claims, but Tom is so far beyond anybody else we ever encountered in trying to strike reasonable deals.”

The wildlife experience

As Colorado’s wilderness advocates ponder expansions such as the proposed 380,000- acre Hidden Gems Wilderness or the 63,000-acre San Juan Wilderness, they are reaching out to inholders and adjacent property owners. The idea, said Gems campaign director Pete Kolbenschlag, is to smooth relations with owners who could disrupt the wilderness experience with development.

Montrose County officials, in reaction to Chapman’s house and plans for the 79-acre parcel he just sold atop the highest point in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, are tweaking their master plan to address building designs in agricultural zones. Planners in Pitkin, San Miguel, Gunnison, Eagle and Summit counties long ago adopted strict building guidelines for islands of private land surrounded by publicly owned mountains.

“The high-country zoning has been a good incentive for landowners to come in and work on creative development rights or conservation easements or just selling their land at reasonable rates,” said White, who recently helped a landowner in the middle of the proposed San Juan Wilderness lock his mining claims in a conservation easement.

Montrose County’s new regulations will govern building height, view corridors, colors, materials and general aesthetics of construction inside the park.

“Until we change the regulations, he will be able to do anything without any real building standards beyond a building permit,” said Steve White, Montrose County’s planner.

Property-rights activists, while agreeing with Chapman that landowners inside federal lands should be more protected from condemnation or low- ball acquisition from the government, do not condone his tactics.

Chapman gives all inholders a bad name, said Chuck Cushman, founder and head of the American Land Rights Association, which formed in 1978 as the National Park Inholders Association.

“It’s disappointing that Mr. Chapman wants to continually bait the government by building completely inappropriate houses in places where houses should not be built,” Cushman said. “He is hurting all inholders nationwide because he gives the government an excuse to develop eminent-domain programs to stop this kind of development. We do not support deliberately destroying property inside national parks for speculative ventures to make money.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com

Chapman’s blazed trails

1984: Tom Chapman announced plans for 132 homes on 4,200 acres on the north rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, then a national monument. The Park Service paid $500 an acre, compared with the $210-an-acre appraised value.

1987: Chapman helped a rancher close a trail through his ranch, blocking access to a Gold Medal Fishery on the Gunnison River. The Bureau of Land Management and local fishermen paid $400,000 to buy back a pathway and restore traditional access.

1993: Chapman sent out pictures of helicopters lugging timber for a home on 240 acres in the West Elk wilderness he had purchased with investors for what he said was $960,000. The Forest Service in 1994 swapped the West Elk land for 107 federal acres in Alta Lakes Basin, above Telluride, which the agency assessed as comparable land. The following year, Chapman sold the alpine acreage in two deals worth $4.2 million.

1998: Chapman and Alabama investment firm TDX acquired 112 acres in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, the year before Congress designated the Montrose County area as a national park. He paid $240,000. Park officials appraised the acreage at $500,000 in 2003, the same year Chapman listed the land on eBay for $1.24 million. Early this year, Chapman and partner Ron Curry finished construction of a 4,700-square-foot home on 33 acres inside the park. Last week, he sold the remaining 79 acres — which hosts five home sites — to an out-of- state buyer in an undisclosed deal.

1999: Chapman and TDX printed glossy brochures of mining claims inside wilderness areas near Vail, Durango, Crested Butte and Cañon City, with prices including potential homes ranging from $2 million to $8 million. Montrose businessman and conservationist Mark Young bought those 19 wilderness parcels from Chapman for $950,000 in 2007, but they are now in foreclosure.

2005: Chapman sent conservation groups and the Forest Service pictures of a bulldozer poised at the base of Red Mountain’s famed Yankee Girl mine. Young bought the Yankee Girl in 2006 for $246,300 and put the historic property into a conservation easement.

April 2010: Chapman announced his Gold Hill Development Co. investment group had spent $246,000 on 103 acres of mining claims in the Bear Creek drainage above Telluride (pictured below). The Telluride ski area had recently won Forest Service approval for guided backcountry skiing in the popular Bear Creek. Chapman, citing avalanche danger, promised to prohibit skiing and hiking on his belt of land that bisects the roadless valley.