Posted on 03/22/2025 5:57:40 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Four Missouri hunters who stepped diagonally from one parcel of federal land in Wyoming to another did not illegally trespass on the airspace of adjacent private property, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, firmly protects public access to millions of acres of land in the court’s six-state jurisdiction and substantially strengthens the rights of “corner-crossers” throughout the West.
The case is rooted in a quirk of the region, where vast swaths of terrain have been divided since the 19th century in a checkerboard pattern of alternating private and public parcels. Lawmakers have long grappled with how to balance the rights of recreationists and private landowners at the corners where four pieces of property meet, and previous court rulings had not settled whether corner-crossing is legal.
The question “may seem trivial,” Judge Timothy Tymkovich wrote in Tuesday’s decision, but “it implicates centuries of property law and the settlement of the American West.” Any barrier that prevents access to public land — including the threat of legal action, which the court likened to a “virtual wall” — is prohibited under the 1885 Unlawful Inclosures Act, the appellate court ruled.
The case began in 2020, when the Missouri men set out to hunt on Elk Mountain, a southern Wyoming peak that is home to an abundant elk population as well as 22,000 acres that are privately owned by a North Carolina pharmaceutical magnate. The landowner, Fred Eshelman, alleged that the hunters violated his airspace when they stepped that year over his “No Trespassing” signs from one patch of Bureau of Land Management territory to another, and again the following year when they used a homemade stepladder to cross the same corner.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Corner Crossing Protected by Federal Law According to Fed Appeals Crt
Disclaimer: I have no association, interest, friendship etc. with this youtube site, it just provides a better explanation of this complicated issue.
I grew up next to Wyoming and southeastern Montana and The attempt by Richland owners to lock away public BLM sections is rampant all over the western states. The landowners love to have local officers charge people with trespassing when they are accessing BLM sections. I fully support this decision.
I never new that I owned the airspace over my property.
One of the next battles going forward, will prob have to opt in or out of allowing drones to deliver near you or to your property.
I’m thinking I have the right to terminate a drone hovering right outside my window.
Taken to the extreme, that means I own millions of galaxies contained within the swath of arc in the sky over me, extending out billions of light years.
Although, I guess I only own these galaxies for a very short snippet of time daily, given the rotation of the Earth.
“I’m thinking I have the right to terminate a drone hovering right outside my window.”
Think again. Destroying a drone in flight is a Federal offense.
L
Parts of Arizona are like this too.
But landowners usually do not care and let people cross.
Most of them rely on kindness of others to get to their property anyway.
This checkerboard pattern apply to most private lots too, while nature is not cooperating!
But once a while, you run into an asshole who puts a locked gate and lock away a major access road! People then have to scramble around it!
Like this magnate, who bought all the land surrounding the public property, basically fencing it off to any public access and then suing people who tried to get there.
I had an opportunity to go elk hunting in Utah with my Dad before he passed away. The private ranch owner next door ran cattle on the public lands. He scheduled his “round up” of those cows the two weeks before elk season.
All the activity drove the game onto his private land where he charged big $$$ to hunt. We saw nothing.
landowners love to have local officers charge people with trespassing when they are accessing BLM sections. I fully support this decision.>>> Feds should give all of this land back to the states. in some cases the statehood charters said they would do so.
I like that guys opening, a quick, short sentence of-”there will be an ad at the end of the video” then instantly boom-right into the meat of the story.
In Nebraska, the issue is rivers. The land owner owns the land under the river but not the water. As long as boats don’t anchor, tie off etc., there are no issues but there are a lot of Karen landowners who don’t understand the laws. Personally, I wouldn’t go fishing without having a firearm with me, plus they’re easier to lose if you bring them with you fishing.
In California property owners along the coast MUST by law allow access to the beach even if it is across their private land.
Congress can do the same thing. In remote areas where there is a mix of public and private owners make it a law that the private owners must allow passage from public land to public land with reasonable restrictions.
Beau could expound upon this situation for HOURS! He’ll be glad to hear of this. He runs into it all the time when he’s hunting Elk out west.
A number of years ago, I was involved in such a ‘corner crossing’ situation. I owned one of four such square properties and a local farm family owned the other three. Over the years the three had been divided among the family, and the piece diagonal to me had been sold off. Thus, the farmer owning the other 2 would not have easy access except for crossing the corner. The previous owner of my property had allowed the farmer to make a trail across what was now my property to reach his property.
No more than once a year, the kindly old farmer would request permission from me to use the trail to visit his property. I always allowed this, but nothing was written.
I later found out that there was some danger to me for allowing this, especially with nothing to document the visits. Under our state’s Adverse Possession law, I could have been forced to concede an access right to the farmer, unless I could prove I had given written permission to him that he acknowledged by signature. This permission statement would have to be renewed at least every 15 years.
It turned out that the farmer died, and the trail was never used by anyone from the family again.
I don’t know what it is today but back when I was a real estate agent you owned the air rights up to 1000 ft. Over your property.
That’s cool and all until the Vogans bring you your property tax bill.
Well, now you don’t have to worry about corner crossing anymore, it is legal.
“Feds should give all of this land back to the states. in some cases the statehood charters said they would do so.”
That’s kind of like the so called “gun buy backs”. The “Feds”, whatever you mean by that, can’t give back to the states what the states never owned to start with. In a number of cases states were formed from territories which territories were owned by the United States and the United States retained ownership of land within the boundaries of the newly formed state. The state never owned such land. This was covered as needed in the Enabling Acts establishing statehood.
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