Mountain towns need housing. The U.S. Forest Service has land. Guess what happens next

The steep slopes around the high country town of Dillon are draped with evergreen forests and streaked with golden aspen groves in the fall. Those endless woods are the domain of U.S. Forest Service supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams.

“I think Summit County is 86 percent national forest,” Fitzwilliams explained on a recent weekday. “Pretty much everything you see is National Forest.”

Fitzwilliams was surveying the pristine mountainsides from a much more mundane piece of land: 11 acres of sparse woods dotted with aging cottages, sheds and shipping containers. The Forest Service compound, sometimes known as a “boneyard,” has occupied a hilltop above Dillon Reservoir since the 1960s.