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Great ruling. The private/public checkerboard is pretty bizarre in the first place. A much more forethought approach would be to add a public buffer around ever
by kortex 3y ago
Great ruling. The private/public checkerboard is pretty bizarre in the first place. A much more forethought approach would be to add a public buffer around everything (basically shrink the private plots by 6' or so).
- Gordonjcp 3y agoShrink them by 3m or 10%, whichever is greater.
- labster 3y agoThe checkerboard makes sense in the 19th century context. Railroads were funded by land speculators, but the government doesn’t want to give them all the best land. Since public/private is a binary distinction, they halftoned the land, sharing the profits and producing the legal gray area we see today.
- DavidPeiffer 3y agoIt would have been interesting if the west was divided into hexagons which tessellate perfectly and don't have this particular problem. I am curious with the technology available at the time, how much either method would have increased the surveying time, accuracy, and other generally important parameters?
- dmurray 3y agoIt's not immediately obvious to me how you colour 50% of hexagons equally dispersed on an infinite grid without cutting some areas off, can you provide a picture?
- DavidPeiffer 3y agoWell shoot...yes, that part fails. Perhaps hexagons cut in half (causing 6-corner intersections) or the isosceles trapezoid pattern below would work. https://robertlovespi.net/2020/06/03/tessellation-of-isosceles-trapezoids/ https://robertlovespi.net/2020/06/03/tessellation-of-isoscel... Partly it'd be cool to have it look like Settlers of Catan.
- Kamq 3y agoYou could have them spiral around each other (i.e. start with two hexagons next to each other, have the left one go up/right and the right one go down/left and keep wrapping clockwise). I think this is only having the areas not be "cut off" in the mathematical sense, though.
- Enginerrrd 3y agoThis would be a huge PITA. See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System And in particular checkout the section titled: Survey design and execution. Now keep in mind errors happened a lot over large distances with difficult terrain and lines got skewed. But defining a chunk of land as the "Southwest quarter of the Northeast quarter", and then breaking it down from there by physical corners set in the ground is pretty sensical even when things get skewed. With hexagons, you COULD do the same thing, but I don't think the errors would come out so well. You'd have to be more careful to tie to more points/lines in order to not accidentally create conflicting definitions. It sounds like a nightmare honestly.
- anon291 3y agoHexagons do not perfectly tesselate a sphere. That's why soccer balls have pentagons.
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y agoYeah. There should be implied easements around private land that borders public land. You can do what you want as long as you do block passage between adjacent, or event reasonable nearby, public land.
- chefandy 3y agoThis is a point of contention in Rhode Island where (I think) the state constitution says that coastline, defined as a place that the tide regularly covers and uncovers, is public land. I believe the original intent was to preserve access for fishing. Lots of wealthy people who own waterfront property go to great lengths to prevent access to the shoreline between their property and the sea. Even in instances where the state has declared the public can walk over a specific privately-owned seawall or down paths to access the shore, landowners hire security guards, install elaborate alarm systems, puncture tires, and generally do whatever they can to harass anyone trying to legally exercise their rights. It's pretty pathetic.
- bombcar 3y agoThe same thing happens in California; they can block access to the beach, but they cannot block you from walking up the beach, or landing a boat. They try anyway.
- isolli 3y ago"A tech billionaire has fought for a decade to block access to a public beach. Now California is suing." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/08/california-sues-vinod-khosla-beach/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/08/califor...
- thomasahle 3y agoJust give us the right/freedom to roam like in Scotland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, etc. The lands in question are completely uncultivated. The owner suffers no loss by letting people walk there.
- m463 3y ago> basically shrink the private plots by 6' or so Might make sense where land is amazingly spacious (like wyoming in this case), but I wonder how that would work in other locales, say row houses, or manhattan or california lots which are measured in square feet...
- jacobolus 3y agoIf you have 2 row houses touching corner-to-corner and the other two corners are both public land with one side otherwise inaccessible, something is going pretty wrong.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PLenz 3y agoNew York has a law to cover exactly this - the landlord has to provide acess through the building. This (and other zoning shenanigans) is why so many buildings in NYC have public atriums or plazas attached. Of course many of those are also conveniently locked all the time because the landlords "forget" that they're public space.
- drewmol 3y agoYes a public access easement should suffice, similar to how beaches are defied in some areas, waterways usually are. But how big is reasonable? Is it for vehicle access and/or larger equipment or only human sized objects?
- fsckboy 3y agoI haven't looked at it closely this time around, but I recall from the previous time looking at it and there is already access to the public parcel from the other side, it's just wildly inconvenient if you're on this side but you, i.e. don't "need" an easement to get there. Something like that, I hope I'm remembering it right.
- cyberax 3y agoThe keywords are "reasonable accommodation". E.g. in California if you have a property near a beach that completely blocks access, you have to provide a reasonable way to it. And there's no need to shrink all the plots if there's a reasonable way already present.
- RobotToaster 3y ago>(basically shrink the private plots by 6' or so) Wouldn't chamfering the corners by 6' have the same effect?
- tengwar2 3y agoNot if you own eight blocks around one public one.
- Evidlo 3y agoHow could you if it's a checkerboard pattern?
- opello 3y agoAllowing people to walk fence lines to get to public land, corner or completely locked by private land, seems like a nicer, comprehensive solution, if we can be okay with the implicit taking.
- ajross 3y agoThe suit isn't about access. It's arguing (unsuccessfully, as it happens) that the checkerboard has created a de facto ownership pattern where large tracts are effectively private. So being forced to allow this "corner crossing" access into the interior of the ranch makes the property less valuable in aggregate and violates what I guess is a long-standing assumption in the real estate market. I guess I don't much care, being neither a rural Wyoming property owner nor someone who wants access to all that public land in the checkerboard. But the net effect of this setup is that "big private ranches" are effectively illegal in Wyoming, and that strikes me as no less irrational than "you can't get to public land if it's surrounded".
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoWouldn’t it be more accurate to say “the act of owning a big private ranch and trying to claim public land that it surrounds as inaccessible is effectively illegal?” The fact that the end result is that “big private ranches are illegal” doesn’t strike me as irrational. These people are well aware that the large swathes of land around them are public land. The fact that they may have purchased them under the assumption that no one would be able to access that land isn’t really an idea that garners a whole lot of sympathy.
- lazide 3y agoIt has been illegal since 1885, but apparently the state doesn’t want the feds involved (it’s a fed law), and the fed is trying to look the other way - most likely because of very rich donors.
- stale2002 3y ago> But the net effect of this setup is that "big private ranches" are effectively illegal in Wyoming No they aren't. All the private ranch owner has to do is purchase the land from its current owner. IE the government. A private ranch can't steal that land from the government though, through some complicate surround maneuver, like from the board game "Go", of course.
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- davidw 3y agoHere's the story of those checkerboards - at least here in Oregon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad_Revested_Lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad...
- grensley 3y agoThis would basically necessitate moving every shared fence in the world.
- kortex 3y agoI meant when they originally designed it, they should have designed in an easement.
- alkonaut 3y agoYou could allow the fences to be in the public area and allow people to walk on either side of the fence. Assuming of course that it's fine for people to walk "inside" the fences, which might depend on whether you are keeping sheep or crocodiles.