Linden residents request county vacate portion of Canyon Road

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Property owners and residents in Linden filed a petition earlier this month requesting that the Christian County Commission vacate a portion of Canyon Road. The petition requests that the county vacate a 2,275 stretch of roadway that runs from the “new gate” at Lindenlure at Lindenlure up to the “old gate”. The “new gate” is the point at which then landowners, the late Mike and Carla Adams, placed a gate to block the public from the Lindenlure access in 2020, only to be ordered by a Christian County judge in 2021 to remove it. The “old gate” refers to a gate at the end of Canyon Road which then leads to private property.

Mike Frazier, one of the petitioners, said the request for the county to vacate the roadway is not an attempt to block public access to Lindenlure.

“There (are) zero plans to restrict anyone from going to the river,” he said.

Rather, Frazier said, he wants to widen an area of the road so that he can move equipment into a field he wants to lease.

“I’m trying to lease the field that’s on the north side of the road there,” he said, “and when I retired, I wanted to start a small cattle operation. And that’s fairly close to my residence, and it would be easy for me to do in there, but the field needs some work for me to get equipment in there. The road needs to be reworked, for lack of a better term.”

If the county were to vacate the road, Frazier said, he could improve it at his own expense.

“I can’t ask the county to make the road better,” he said, “because why would they expend funds for an individual? That would be silly. And if I was a taxpayer, I’d be upset about that. So, by my asking to have the road vacated, then I can go back through there on my own and make the road more usable for me.”

David Romano, who was one of the plaintiffs in the 2020 lawsuit to restore public access to Lindenlure, said he doesn’t buy the explanation.

“(Frazier) says that he’s thinking of leasing land … from the Adams, who do have fields on that side,” Romano said. “But the Adams access those fields through their own private road already, not Canyon Road. So why wouldn’t he access it through there instead of spending money to fix up a road that isn’t suitable, according to him, but has been used by previous landowners all the way going back to the 40’s to access (property), like further down, the Belk property. In the court case, we had testimony from James Belk saying twice a year, he ran his hay cutting gear through Canyon Road to get to his property beyond the old gate. So (Belk) ran his gear fine.”

In the petition, Frazier stated that it would be “beneficial to the county as a whole” to vacate the portion of Canyon Road the petition describes. Bradley Jackson, Eastern District commissioner, said it will be up to Frazier to prove this.

“He basically has to prove that … it’s not beneficial to the public in any way, shape or form, that it actually puts a burden on the county to maintain and for what purpose,” he said. “So that will be his burden to bear to us, to show whether or not … those are the cases.”

The Christian County Commission will hold a hearing on the petition on Jan. 13, 2027.

To read the petition, go online to www.christiancountymo.gov, and then click on the “Commission” tab. From there, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Agendas and Minutes” link, and then go to the “Attachments” link for the Oct. 1, 2026 meeting. The petition begins on p. 235.