At one end of Santa Gertrudis Lane in Tumacacori is a locked gate installed by the Union Pacific Railroad. To reach the exit on East Frontage Road, drivers cross the railroad tracks and a usually shallow section of the Santa Cruz River.

But when the river began to swell from monsoon rains in late June, lane resident Ray Sayre, manager of the Santa Gertrudis Lane Association, contacted the railroad.

“We have an imminent danger here,” Sayre told Union Pacific representatives in a recent conference call, he said. “We are in a position now where we would be trapped.”

Besides the Sayres, other residents and a horse-boarding ranch are between the tracks and the river.

Union Pacific put up the gate near Pendleton Drive in 2008, with the blessing of the lane association, to keep hundreds of vehicles from passing over its private crossing, Sayre said.

“There’s not a need for 1,200 vehicles a day to traverse that road,” said Larry Collins, manager of track maintenance for Union Pacific. He worried about the safety of trains and the public, he said.

Someone tore out the gate in September 2008 and the railroad fixed the gate and reinstalled it, Collins said.

But on May 30, 2009, nearly 100 property owners east and north of the lane staged a protest at the gate and cut the lane association’s lock. Organizer Larry Leslie claimed that people who own land on the original Baca Float had a historic right to cross Santa Gertrudis Lane to get to Interstate19.

The protestors confronted Union Pacific representatives who warned them not to cut the lock. After they opened the gate, Collins told the Nogales International he might take out the crossing altogether. This could mean bulldozing the approaches that slope upward to the tracks on both sides, so cars could not cross.

“But it didn’t happen,” Sayre said. Instead the railroad secured the gate with a huge chain and lock in early June.

“We don’t have a key for that lock,” said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Antonio Estrada in mid-June. “The real issue is going to be if somebody gets badly hurt or dies because nobody can get to them when that place has been open for so long.”

The new Union Pacific lock was the largest one the lockbox company made and the new chain was thicker, said Genaro Rivera, battalion chief for the Tubac Fire District.

“The locks we use aren’t big enough to use on that chain,” Rivera said. The week after the protest, he was sent to retrieve his department lock from the gate.

When monsoon rains made the river impassable in late June, the railroad relented, Sayre said. It installed a smaller chain and allowed two locks on the gate �“ one for Tubac Fire and the other for residents of the lane who live between the river and the gate.

Sayre and Tubac Fire will give the locks to the railroad so “everything on that gate belongs to Union Pacific,” Sayre said. “If anybody decides to cut a lock or remove the gate, that’s a federal crime.”

Chief Kevin Keeley confirmed that Tubac Fire intended to give its lock to Union Pacific.

“I have to have access,” he said. “Our only priority is to serve the residents caught between the gate and the east side of the river.”

If anyone stages another action at the gate, the railroad might follow through on its threat to close the crossing, Sayre predicted.

“That’s still an option,” Collins said.

Leslie has not given up the effort to open the gate, he said.

When the Baca Float Coalition Inc. formed last year, Leslie participated on the legal committee, he said. But he dropped away from the group when “nothing seemed to be happening on Santa Gertrudis.”

The coalition has retained an attorney and is gathering background information, said co-chair Kathi Campana.

One of the goals of the coalition is to “restore and preserve the historical access routes used by the residents and granted to the lands east of the Santa Cruz River, specifically Palo Parado Road and Santa Gertrudis Lane,” according to its Web site.

“Our function was to keep both crossings open,” Campana said. Santa Gertrudis Lane “is closer for emergency services to get victims out,” she said, referring to residents of northeast Rio Rico, the Salero Ranch, Morning Star Ranch and the Tubac Foothills.

If nothing happens in the next few months, “I’d be pushing for a preliminary injunction to get Santa Gertrudis open,” Leslie said.

But those small private crossings were never intended for all the traffic they’re seeing, Collins said. “Every governmental agency agrees that (Santa Gertrudis) is a private road.”

Last year, Union Pacific agreed to cooperate with Santa Cruz County to convert its private crossing at Palo Parado Road, two and a half miles south of Santa Gertrudis, to a public crossing, Collins said. The railroad is installing a new concrete crossing at a cost of about $60,000 plus labor.

“At Palo Parado, the visibility is much better, 150 feet on both sides,” Collins said. “We can keep the brush clear.”

The county has applied for funds to pay for gates and signals at the crossing and asked Congressman Raul Grijalva to try to secure an appropriation to pay for road improvements and a bridge.

Instead of spending millions for a bridge, the county could create a better way for residents east of the Santa Cruz River to get to I-19, Collins said.

“Tie Bridge Road (in Tubac) into Pendleton Drive,” a distance of about 1.8 miles that crosses some private property, Collins said. Residents closer to Tubac who want to travel north could cross an existing bridge that carries little traffic and a public rail crossing.