A federal appeals court has granted hunters, hikers and others the right to cross private property to reach sections of public land, in a case the judges say “implicates centuries of property law and the settlement of the American West.”
With public access to millions of acres potentially on the line, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit approved “corner-crossing” — when an individual steps from one public tract to another, passing diagonally across two adjacent parcels of private property.
“Anyone familiar with the game checkers can visualize this corner-crossing problem: to move diagonally across the board, a piece must momentarily occupy the space on and above the opponent’s squares,” Judge Timothy Tymkovich wrote. “If the opposing player could foreclose that move, the opponent would be unable to travel the board.”
Citing an 1885 law that prohibits the “inclosure” of public lands as well as more than a century’s worth of Western property cases, the unanimous appellate panel concluded that people could corner-cross so long as they did not physically touch the private land owned by the Iron Bar Ranch.
