Surveyor Wayne Mutrux, left, points to a map of Coburn Hill Road during a site visit Saturday that was part of the Craftsbury Selectmen’s effort to settle the road’s future. Looking on, left to right, are attorney Steve Adler and Mission New England representatives Roy Ward and R.C. Kirk. Photo by Chris BraithwaiteCRAFTSBURY — Towards the end of Tuesday’s hearing on the future of Coburn Hill Road, surveyor Wayne Mutrux read a letter that neighborhood residents sent to their selectmen in 1874.

The road, they said, “long has been unsafe for public travel.”  They complained that the “mud and mire holes are impassible,” and that fences across the road made travel difficult.

“So Coburn Hill Road’s problems aren’t new,” Mr. Mutrux concluded.

On a tour of the road Saturday morning, one of the town’s current selectmen, Bruce Urie, observed that he’d been on the board for more than 20 years, “and this road has always been a thorn in our side.

“We’d like a resolution, with no hard feelings,” Mr. Urie added.  “That’s why we’re here today.”

One resident of the road, Aaron Billings, observed that the task would not be easy.  “Up here there are 29 residents,” he said Saturday.  “That’s 29 opinions, and the select board has got to deal with us.”

“We’re just going to give you to Albany,” Mr. Urie said.

Giving the Coburn Hill Road —which is actually a town trail — to Albany probably isn’t an option for the Craftsbury Selectmen.  But it has been seriously proposed that the town give a portion of the old byway to the people who live at the end of it — a religious survivalist group called Mission New England.

The group, who neighbors say sometimes follow their Sunday services with small arms practice, said Saturday that they didn’t know the town had a right-of-way through their property when they bought it in 1998.  “Our attorney said the road had been discontinued,” said Roy Ward, one of two members who attended both the site visit and the hearing, along with their attorney, Steve Adler of St. Johnsbury.

Mission New England put an unlocked gate across the road where it entered its property, and for years relied on belligerence to keep people away.

Monte Mason of Morrisville said Saturday his son took his four-wheeler through the gate, but turned around when he was warned that there was shooting going on, “and he could get hit with a stray bullet.”

“I’m a little bit offended that my son was treated that way,” said Mr. Mason, who grew up in Albany and used to hunt along the road with his grandfather.

Complaints about such incidents moved the selectmen to order the gate taken down in the summer of 2009.

They relented after the mission adopted a more conciliatory attitude, hired Mr. Adler to represent them, and offered to swap 84 acres of their land for the town trail through their property.

The selectmen didn’t take that offer up, and it is apparently off the table.

Instead, with the permission of voters at Town Meeting in March, the selectmen hired Mr. Mutrux to survey Coburn Hill Road.

It was no mean feat.  Much of Tuesday’s hearing was taken up by the surveyor’s account of his search for traces of the trail as it runs through the remoter sections of the Mission New England property.

The trail was devastated by a 1997 flood, he noted, and in places he relied on a piece of steel cable hitched to a tree, old culverts and a couple of steel I-beams to locate it, or at least approximate where it had been.

The road’s history is scarcely less obscure than its present whereabouts.

Mr. Mutrux said his search of town documents revealed that the northernmost two miles of Coburn Hill Road, including the part that ran through the mission property and connected with a road in Albany, was discontinued by the town in 1918.

The rest of the road was discontinued in 1933, Mr. Mutrux said.  But a few months later the town decided that what was formerly Coburn Hill Road would be “open as a trail, two rods wide, to follow the course of the old road.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mr. Adler argued that the 1933 document might have referred only to the remnant of Coburn Hill Road left after the town discontinued its northern end in 1918.

The selectmen didn’t respond to that suggestion.  Nor did their lawyer, former deputy secretary of state Paul Gilles, an acknowledged expert on Vermont’s ancient roads.

There was almost no argument and surprisingly little testimony at Tuesday’s formal hearing, which leaves the selectmen 60 days to come to a conclusion about the road’s future.

Neil Ulman of Craftsbury said he rode his bicycle along the trail through what is now the mission property after the 1997 flood.  “The road was badly washed out,” Mr. Ulman said, “but I didn’t have any trouble finding the way.”

Later, expressing his opinion on the matter, Mr. Ulman said he thought the trail is of value to the town.  “I would like to see a trail remain,” he said.