A rancher in Nicasio could lose access to the only road that reaches his home, animals and crops if a judge finds merit to a neighbor’s lawsuit challenging the legality of a 138-year-old easement.

The suit, filed against Mark Pasternak by neighbors Kathleen and Joseph Jolson, is squarely focused on the use of a narrow dirt road known as Road to Ranches, which starts at a bridge across from the town square and rises into the hills east of downtown Nicasio. But the suit follows a years-long brouhaha over a youth camp started by Mr. Pasternak on his 75-acre Devil’s Gulch Ranch. In 2013, the Jolsons lost a suit against Mr. Pasternak over the camp, and despite appeals by neighbors also concerned about noise, safety and water usage, the county approved a partial expansion of the camp’s use permit.

Now the Jolsons are arguing that the Pasternaks have no legal easement on the road, which runs through the western portion of the couple’s property. (The Jolsons purchased the property, where they tend to two acres of olive trees and keep horses, in 1996.) 

It’s a road Mr. Pasternak has used since he bought the land in 1971. He has been tending the windy path ever since, according to a declaration he submitted in the current case. “I routinely maintain the Road to Ranches, including keeping the road packed and well graded to minimize dust, noise and improve safety. I pay the largest share of the cost to apply ‘Dust Off’ to the road,” he wrote. 

Mr. Pasternak, who raises pigs, rabbits and sheep and operates a vineyard with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, wrote that he started the camp that has drawn the ire of many neighbors because he wanted “to expose youth to a real working ranch where they could learn about where their food comes from and how to properly take care of the environment.” 

(Mr. Pasternak told the Light that his lawyers advised him not to speak publicly about the case at this time. The Jolsons did not return requests for comment.)

Devil’s Gulch was home to a dairy in the mid-1800s, when an easement was first established (though the two parties have debated whether it is actually the same road that now exists). The 1866 deed to which the easement has been traced conveyed the original 873-acre Devil’s Gulch Ranch from William Miller to Lorenzo Martinelli.

The dairy closed sometime in the 1940s, after which cattle grazed the pastures until Mr. Pasternak purchased the land when he was just 19, according his ranch’s website. 

Mr. Pasternak held the first youth camp in 1997 and secured a use permit from the county in 2004. In 2009, Mr. Pasternak applied for an expansion of his permit to include more campers, overnight camping, special events and school tours. A long list of neighbors, including the Jolsons, soon sent in reams of objections. Kathleen Jolson was fearful of increased water usage, writing in emails to the county that Mr. Pasternak was already drawing down the aquifer to dramatically low levels (to which, she said, he alerted her each August).

The neighbors’ appeal successfully prevented Mr. Pasternak from running an overnight camp. (Mr. Pasternak subsequently applied for another expansion of his use permit that would allow overnight camping, an application that is still incomplete, according to county planner Curtis Havel.) 

But after some changes to the use permit were approved, the Jolsons sued the county. The couple contended that Mr. Havel erred when he administratively approved the Y.M.C.A. to run Mr. Pasternak’s camp and allowed the pick-up location for kids to move from Nicasio to San Rafael. The Jolsons asked the court to bar the camp from operating until the county conducted a public hearing on the change. They also argued that an environmental review was required under the California Environmental Quality Act to assess the impacts of increased traffic on Lucas Valley Road.

The suit itself also questioned whether all the activities were related to agriculture (citing stovemaking and weaving workshops) and reiterated their fears over water usage.

In the summer of 2013, Marin Superior Court Judge Roy Chernus ruled against the Jolsons, finding that the use permit changes approved by the county were minor in nature. 

The first lawsuit didn’t challenge the legality of the easement. But it did allege that the camp had spurred more traffic and was “damaging the road,” and the Jolsons’ current lawyer, Neil Sorensen, has been in communication with the county over whether Mr. Pasternak had a legal right to the easement since at least 2011. 

(In 2009, when Jolson’s then-attorney, Patrick Hallinen, wrote to planning commissioners about concerns over increased use of the road, he appeared to believe the easement was valid, writing that it “was granted by the Jolson’s predecessor in interest in 1866.”)

In the current lawsuit, filed in February 2013, the Jolsons assert that the Pasternaks have no right to an easement over the Jolson’s property. And if the easement is legal, they say, the Pasternaks are “overburdening” it with “new and incompatible uses… beyond the scope of whatever easement rights, if any, exist over the Jolson [p]roperty.” 

The suit says that monetary compensation for the easement would not be sufficient to address their grievances.

Though the filing does not specify what harms they’ve suffered from the use of the road, an email about the use permit the couple sent to Mr. Havel in 2009 claims, “Cars run all day and all night up and down Road to Ranches; trucks lay on their horns through the s-curves at the top of our property. He has a considerable amount of traffic even without the camp running.” 

(In the same email, they wrote, “His operation has nothing to do with ‘food or fiber’ or anything remotely agricultural other than [that] his paying guests will eat food and hopefully wear clothes.”)

That year other neighbors also complained about buses and traffic—both the noise they created and the safety hazards posed by so many vehicles driving up a road that is sometimes steep, narrow and without guardrails.

In response to the new suit’s allegations, Mr. Pasternak’s lawyer Misty Groves submitted copies of an easement from 1976. The text of that easement, which names previous owners of lands along the road (including Mark’s sister, Carla Pasternak) notes an earlier legal dispute over the bridge and dirt road that the 1976 agreement apparently sought to address. 

The easement states, “The roadway shall only be used…for low density access in conjunction with residential and agricultural uses common to the area.” 

But Mr. Sorenson, the Jolson’s lawyer, wrote in response that there is no proof the easement was certified. “The 1976 easement attached as Exhibit ‘A’ to her declaration is unsigned, apparently not recorded and was created (if at all) long before [Ms. Groves] was an attorney (or possibly born),” he wrote.

The 1866 deed, he said, doesn’t specifically outline the easement’s location, and might not be the same easement at all.

Both sides have cited expert land surveyors who have agreed with their own positions on whether the easement does or does not exist.

But the argument over the various agreements also begs the question of what in fact legalizes an easement. Mr. Pasternak’s lawyer has contended that an easement doesn’t necessarily have to be recorded to be valid.

In an email to the county from 2011, one of Mr. Pasternak’s lawyers, George Silvestri, wrote, “Access easements needn’t always be recorded to be valid, existing property rights under California law.” Instead, easements can be implied by longstanding use.

Mr. Sorensen, in a lengthy response, said that to his knowledge, the county had never relied on an easement that hadn’t been officially recorded.

Mr. Havel said this week that the legality of the easement was now “a matter that will get straightened out in court.” A hearing is set for Tuesday, Dec. 2.

As for how this would affect his use permit, he said only that the county would “cross that bridge when we come to it.”