Trial date set in years-long saga of disputed gravel road outside Mora, Minn.

A trial date has been set in the years-long saga of a disputed gravel road outside of Mora, a central Minnesota small town about 100 miles north of the Twin Cities.

At a pretrial hearing Wednesday, Judge Jason Steffen announced the case of Hornet Street — less than a mile of gravel road connecting a few houses on Kanabec County farmland to the outside world — will be resolved in a bench trial beginning Oct. 6.

The question at hand is simple: Is this section of Hornet Street a private driveway or a township road? That question has pitted neighbor against neighbor in this quiet township of 432 residents.

For close to a century, Hornet Street had been a Hillman Township road dead-ending at a family farm. The township stopped maintaining it in the 1980s when a family from southern Minnesota owned it and rented out the farmland.

The Crisman family purchased the land in 2013, moving from Shoreview into their new home in 2017. In 2019, they put 100 loads of gravel on the road. That’s when a neighbor, Dan Schmoll, installed some posts on the road and drew his line in the sand. The legal dispute has stretched on since then.

Schmoll had been raised in the now-empty house on the part of Hornet Street closest to the county road. He now lives a mile away, and with his mother he owns land on each side of Hornet Street.

Renee and Andy Crisman live with their three daughters in a new solar-powered house at the end of a long driveway, and the family raises grass-fed cattle on the land. The dispute has affected not just township road maintenance but school bus routes — the Crismans’ elementary-aged daughters travel more than a half mile for pickup — mail delivery, which they get from a post office box miles away, and new fiber internet lines, which have been blocked from their property.

Both sides portray themselves as victims of harassment and bullying and accuse the other side of lies and intimidation. The Crismans and their allies deem it an abuse of power by Schmoll and the township, while Schmoll and his allies paint the Crismans as outsiders who want their way no matter what the law says.

In 2021, township supervisors essentially declared the north end of the road doesn’t exist, citing a law about townships not maintaining abandoned roads.

Then a county judge called the action “unreasonable and absurd,” and township electors voted to end an appeal of the decision. Township supervisors refused to drop their appeal, calling the vote improper. An appellate judge agreed with the township, saying it had no duty to maintain the road. That case focused solely on the maintenance of the road, whereas the current case is larger in scope, determining whether this quarter-mile stretch of road is actually a proper township road.

As a compromise, the township extended a different road to the Crismans’ property line. The Crismans, who note the township still maintains six stretches of road where no one lives, refused to build a second driveway to that road, calling it unfair cronyism by the township. Earlier this year, they filed for a temporary restraining order on Schmoll after he installed a camera pointed toward their property.

The attorney representing Hillman Township says the township doesn’t own that portion of Hornet Street — and advocates for Minnesota townships have expressed worries about how this situation could be applied to other barely used township roads that can be a big taxpayer burden in rural areas with declining populations.

But the Crismans and their attorneys counter: Why a road would be declared abandoned and leave people without access to their homes and businesses?

Renee Crisman said Wednesday she was disappointed that the trial won’t be until October, and a judge’s ruling may not come until 90 days after. That could mean it drags into another winter, and winter weather always means a fresh dispute over maintenance.

“I want to have this over,” she said. “It’s so hard, the unknown, just sitting here waiting.”