Develop Paradise? It's farmland forever, if Jon White has his way

By Jon Cox

April 19, 2005 | PARADISE -- As one passes through the small town, not many houses or businesses dot the landscape. In fact, all you can see for miles on end, it seems, is farm after farm after farm.

If residents such as Jon White have anything to say about it, their home of Paradise will always be that way. Almost a year and a half ago, White sold the development rights of his almost 1,600 acres of land to the Utah Department of Agriculture for its fair value, $1.75 million. Under such an agreement, the land can never be developed. White maintains ownership of the property, but can only continue to farm the land.

"He fulfilled his lifelong dream," his son Brent White said. "No one can ever develop the property. He wanted it to be farmland forever."

"As a farmer, your goal is to go on farming, to leave your land to your kids without them having to sell half of it to pay taxes," White said.

In the future, his children can sell the land, but the development rights will always belong to the Department of Agriculture.

White's farm is the largest such protected land in Utah. It is also the first open space project funded by multiple donors. The federal government provided half of the $1.75 million purchase price with the Farm and Rangeland Protection Program, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, LeRay McCallister Critical Lands Fund and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation also contributing. The remaining amount not contributed, White donated himself.

White's great-grandfather settled their Brooke Ranch nearly 100 years ago. Before then, Cache Valley's first creamery was built on the property, sometime in the late 1800s.

The land will protect large groups of elk, deer, pheasant, grouse and chukars, among other animals.

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