Current priorities / Sutton, Eska Falls and Buffalo Mine Road
Ten miles an hour, or get a permit.
If you ride, hunt or walk out of Sutton, up to Eska Falls, or anywhere along Buffalo Mine Road, this is about your country.
The state calls it the Jonesville Public Use Area and the Matanuska Valley Moose Range. Almost nobody else does. It also covers Slipper Lake and Wishbone Lake.
The Department of Natural Resources wants to make it illegal to drive faster than 10 miles an hour in parts of it, from May through September, unless you hold a permit from the department.
What is actually proposed
On 7 October 2026 the department published proposed changes to 11 AAC 96, the chapter covering miscellaneous land use. Two of the new provisions matter to anyone who uses that country.
Proposed 11 AAC 96.016(e)(3) for the Jonesville Public Use Area, and proposed 11 AAC 96.017(a)(14) for the Matanuska Valley Moose Range, both say the same thing: from 1 May through 30 September, a person may not, without a permit from the department, operate a vehicle on land at a speed greater than 10 miles per hour, either within a designated public use site or within 100 feet of the waters of Slipper Lake and Wishbone Lake.
Failing to obtain or comply with that permit is subject to citation and penalty under AS 41.23.288 and AS 41.23.289.
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Why we oppose it
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Nobody can say what the permit requires.
The proposal makes lawful use above 10 miles an hour conditional on a permit, but the department has not published what that permit will require, what it will cost, how long it will take, or who will qualify. It could be a form. It could be safety training. It could carry further restrictions. We asked, and the Division of Mining, Land and Water could not tell us. The public is being asked to comment on a requirement whose terms do not yet exist.
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The permit can be taken away at any time.
Proposed 11 AAC 96.250(34) defines a permit as "a written authorization, revocable with or without cause, to engage in uses or activities that are otherwise prohibited or restricted." Access that can be withdrawn at any moment, for no stated reason, is not secure access.
"a written authorization, revocable with or without cause"Proposed 11 AAC 96.250(34)
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The area it covers can be widened later.
The limit applies "within a designated public use site." Proposed 11 AAC 96.250(32) defines that as "an area on state land or water that the department has identified for increased management attention." The department decides what counts. It can expand where this rule bites without another rulemaking and without another comment period.
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This is a blank cheque written through a permit process.
We are not aware of any other state land in Alaska where ordinary off road vehicle use requires a permit. If this is adopted here, Jonesville becomes the testing ground, and the same approach has a precedent everywhere else. That deserves a far broader conversation than one comment period on one area.
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Ten miles an hour is slow.
For scale, the State of Alaska sets the speed limit in marked school crosswalk zones at 20 miles an hour, under 13 AAC 02.325(d). This proposal would set half that, on open ground, and make exceeding it a permit matter.
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It is another layer of management.
The notice does not identify a record of speed related incidents at these locations that this rule is meant to address. We are asking the department to produce one.
What we are asking for
Withdraw the speed and permit provisions. If the department believes a speed rule is needed at specific sites, set a reasonable speed, drop the permit requirement, and tie the rule to mapped locations that cannot be widened administratively. At a minimum, publish the permit terms and reopen the comment period so people can comment on what is actually being proposed.
Read it yourself
The state buried these at the bottom of the notice page, and their own links only open if you load that page first. These copies open straight away.
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The proposed regulation text
The actual wording. The speed and permit language is on pages 1 and 4. PDF -
The public notice
Deadlines, how to comment, and who to contact. PDF -
Map of the area affected
Map 7, showing the proposed Slipper Lake and Wishbone Lake public use sites. PDF -
The official notice on the State of Alaska site
The original posting. Regulation project 2025200629. State site
Prefer to send your own?
You can comment directly. By email to dnr.jonesville.regulation@alaska.gov, by post to Molly Benson, Division of Mining, Land and Water, 550 West Seventh Avenue, Suite 1070, Anchorage, AK 99501, or by fax to 907-269-8904. Same deadline either way. Comments and your name become a public record under the Alaska Public Records Act.
Submit a public comment.
We have made this easy. Answer a few plain questions and we turn your answers into a formal comment letter, citing the right sections of the proposal, and send it to the Department of Natural Resources for you.
You are welcome to write your own instead. The department's email, postal address and fax are further down this page, and a comment you send yourself counts exactly the same.
If you go through our form, we receive a copy. That means we can show the department how many Alaskans responded, and chase yours up if it does not appear in their record.