I’ve been reading about the corner crossing controversy for a couple years now and don’t think it’s been brought up here. I live in an area of the US that has this patchwork of public and private land. Before I knew of the controversy, I corner crossed thinking there must be nothing wrong with it. Little did I know that rich people that own the private land surrounding the public land begin to view that public land as their own private, and free, paradise. If it truly becomes illegal to corner cross, that huge amount of private land effectively becomes private unless you can afford the expensive helicopter ride in. We are talking around 15 million acres of public land effectively blocked off to the public. I think it is bullshit.
There is a brand new NY Times article out and I hope I have copied the correct gifted link which should allow any to view:
Didn’t we have some huge thread about this a while (like 10 years) back? I remember something about a big controversy because the public needed to cross over some private property to get to a beach.
That is somewhat similar, but different, and a lot smaller scale than the corner crossing controversy.
The US gave away and sold entire sections (one mile by one mile chunk of land equaling 640 acres) and retained others in a checkerboard fashion. If the four land owners (or one really rich guy) surrounding one of these public sections don’t want to grant access, they have essentially created a free 640 acre parcel for themselves. There are a LOT of these locked public sections in the west. Here are a couple more articles about it:
Corner crossing seems like a very reasonable case for eminent domain. Give the landowners an opportunity to designate and mark easements to public land. If they won’t, the government can do it for them.
It would require appropriating, what, a few square feet per corner? Just enough to mark a trail. An insignificant loss of real property, and I don’t care if they’re sad about losing exclusive access to public land.
100% this. On our property, there are three property corners that meet at the same spot. Ours and two neighbors. That corner is on the boundary to National Forest. We do, of course just walk across that. I suppose we are sometimes putting a foot on someone else’s property, but no one give a damn cause we are all reasonable people.
The issue also opens up a whole can of worms with enforcement. Say Rich Asshole (RA) calls the local cops on some hunters, who are now on public land. Cops say, 'Yeah, we’ll check this out… maybe tomorrow". Of course, they never do. So, RA now either shuts up, causes a stink up the chain of command with his money, hires a private security team… any number of things. Shit gets out of control from here real fast.
Too bad real life doesn’t have the rule “Don’t Be A Dick”.
Yeah–we’re kind of in the epicenter of this in Montana, but it’s a serious issue in the whole West and it’s very frustrating that the US Gov. will happily write me a $250 ticket for being on the wrong trail with my MTB or dirtbike, but pretty much steadfastly refuses to enforce easements that have been signed, much less prescriptive easements. I really think if these fuckers want to have this public land for their own they at an absolute minimum should have to pay taxes on it. There’s a notorious pair of Texan brothers in Idaho that is putting armed guards on public easements and denying access. The Crazy Mountains in my back yard are another prime example–large chunks of access have been cut off by rich landowners and the USFS just shuffles their feet.
I think the majority of folks that want to access these land-locked sections of lands tend to be hunters and fisherman, and while I have hunted, my interest now is in hiking and mountain biking. I think that there are rich hunters that also like these great sections of land being closed off unless you can afford the helicopter ride in and out.
Do you have any articles or links about this?
I just read about the Crazies and yes, they are a prime example of this problem (the wiki page even mentions the private land ownership causing problems). I’ve never been to those mountains but they look great. Spend a lot of time in the Cabinets.
Yes! It is really a few square feet of property to put in a gate.
Is there other public access into this portion of the NF or is it surrounded by private property?
And they would be laughed at all the way out of court. The points that our properties meet is three triangles meeting at a point on the NF boundary. I step right from my property into NF. I suppose casting a shadow for 3 seconds on their property is encroachment.
Directly over those two fence posts. In this image, the cross-hatched areas are private and the brownish are public. The hunters went from one public section to another. They built the fence to ensure they never stepped on the private land.
According to the WSJ article linked in the NYT’s article:
“Obviously, if the ranch is subject to forcible trespass, its value goes down significantly,”
So, stepping over that property is “forcible trespass” and lowering it’s value.
In the WSJ article, they even went after small planes that landed onto a public section. They really want that public section to be for their sole use.
That is the argument. We aren’t talking about having to step on private property…we are talking about having to to over private property. I imagine that for you to step from your property to the NF land, part of your body has to go over your neighbors properties.
For those that live in a city and have a sidewalk. Can you imagine calling the cops when someone’s arm went over your property as they walked down the sidewalk?
How is this legal? Couldn’t the ranch hands be cited for harassment / assault?
I’m hoping that the civil lawsuit backfires. I understand not wanting trespassers - you’re now (possibly) liable for their actions on your land. This parcel of land, however, is not theirs. I hope that not only do the hunters win, the appeals go up the courts to where someone (state supreme? SCOTUS?) says “you have to give reasonable access to public lands.”
Forget that - there are some houses in my neighborhood on properties that do not abut a public street. The only way to get to these houses is down what appears to be a driveway between two other houses on the public street. There is almost certainly an easement in the deed of one of the houses next to the “driveway”. Imagine if the owner of that property didn’t allow the owners of the landlocked properties to access them, and then, when they were forced to, claimed their property was worth less because they had to allow these people to cross. They’d be laughed out of court as the property was never really worth the higher amount as they never really had the right to keep those people from crossing their property.
Seems to me the same is true of the corner-crossing - if there’s a court decision that corner crossing is legal, that decision won’t make it legal (thereby lowering the value of the land) , it will be a decision that it has always been legal and the ranch owners never had the right to keep the public from corner-crossing - which means the value hasn’t actually changed.
Clearly this whole thing has nothing to do with right & wrong. It’s simply a power play by the rich landowners. Who may well have the lower-level courts sown up.
There is a bit of history in this country that when you get right down to it, there is one right that is “more equal” than all the others: the property rights of the ruling class. Pretty much all other rights bend the knee to that one.
For this reason I’d not be too surprised to see “corner crossing”, reasonable easements, and all the rest declared by SCOTUS to be simply wrong and in fact downright unconscionable. We shall see.
But bringing a case for eminent domain is effectively admitting that legal access is not possible without it. Which allows the landowner to argue "You’re saying that right now I have exclusive access, which you propose to take from me. The compensation you offer me must thus take account of the value of that exclusive access.
