Public Access (NY Times)

I think the exclusivity of land used to be about resources and experiences, like what a private hunting reserve should be, but nowadays like a lot of things, its about ego and narcissism. If it was about hunting I could relate, but this is just a pathological obsession with conquering the world these wildly wealthy people have, it’s not about what you and I care about. It’s never about what you and I care about with them, they want to win everything in sight.
 
Matt B said:
Sounds like you maybe knew this history all along. You weren’t trolling, I hope. Fortunes were made behind railroad subsidies/giveaways, to say the least. The power and leeway given to railroads, to this day, really has almost no comparison to anything else. There’s a phrase called “getting railroaded,” right? Well there’s history behind that. (Git yr mind out the gutter, you know who I’m talking to I don’t want to have to @ you all)
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Not a troll. I went off and did some googling, but I was aware of how much money people like Cornelius Vanderbilt made off the gifts given to them by the US government. I have heard people say that we needed that kind of man at that time to get the job done but if you look at what kind of a human he was, I am a full blown believer that the job could have been done better, and without as much bloodshed. On the government side, the scheme of checker boarding seems to me to be a huge oversight, given the problems it causes today. If they had stipulated a 30 foot square right of way at each corner usable by all adjacent landowners.... problem solved. So the part I wonder about is whose idea that was and whether there was some ulterior motive behind it.
Over the history of our great country there has been many schemes that the powerful have used to abuse the power given them by the voters. Many of the seemingly stupid laws we have today are reactions to the corruption of the past. I'm always trying to understand it a little better without letting it absorb my mind a ruin my life.
 
I find these corner crossing , public access court cases interesting.

The greed and corruption is horrendous.
 
I haven't read all of the posts on this thread but I have experience with "corner" jumping in WY and it is legal where there is a corner marker. There are a few corners that are marked. (now you know where I like to antelope hunt!) Using a GPS just isn't accurate enough. To test this just turn on your GPS and watch how much your location changes without moving the GPS unit. It would be impossible to step over a corner with 100% certainty.

Now a 20 foot ladder may be a different story. It would depend on the availability of signal from the satellites. Maybe Pole Vaulting!

As I've said before it would not cost much for a certified surveyor to go mark ALL corners and allow the public to step over corners. It'll be a maintenance headache where there is farming but this has gone on for years already.
 
mattsavage said:
As a surveyor, it would cost ALOT...
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I should not have used cost...I should have used value...the cost may be low compared to the value. Surveying to find a corner costs a lot less than buying the land! (there I just helped you with a value proposition for a proposal to WDFW/DNR... for surveying corners!)

Let's say you survey a corner and create access to an entire 640 acre section at $500/acre that's $320,000 in value. Who knows what it would be worth in perpetuity?
 
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longputt said:
I should not have used cost...I should have used value...the cost may be low compared to the value. Surveying to find a corner costs a lot less than buying the land! (there I just helped you with a value proposition for a proposal to WDFW/DNR... for surveying corners!)

Let's say you survey a corner and create access to an entire 640 acre section at $500/acre that's $320,000 in value. Who knows what it would be worth in perpetuity?
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And it's not like every corner is worth marking...
 
The issue doesn't seem to be about marking or identifying corners. The issue is that some landowners contend that corner crossing is physically impossible without tresspassing at least a minimum of private property airspace to cross from one public corner to the diagonally adjacent public corner.
 
Salmo_g said:
The issue doesn't seem to be about marking or identifying corners. The issue is that some landowners contend that corner crossing is physically impossible without tresspassing at least a minimum of private property airspace to cross from one public corner to the diagonally adjacent public corner.
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Wow, how is that possible? People have been jumping out of helicopters into wilderness areas for years, anyone watch Warren Miller? People land helicopters in private land locked sections. Most areas you cannot own water that flows over land. The areas I've hunted in WY were well know for how to corner cross. It seems like there are numerous precedent for not owning the air.

I guess someone could build an obstruction that made it difficult to cross but owning the air?
 
nwbobber said:
Not a troll. I went off and did some googling, but I was aware of how much money people like Cornelius Vanderbilt made off the gifts given to them by the US government. I have heard people say that we needed that kind of man at that time to get the job done but if you look at what kind of a human he was, I am a full blown believer that the job could have been done better, and without as much bloodshed. On the government side, the scheme of checker boarding seems to me to be a huge oversight, given the problems it causes today. If they had stipulated a 30 foot square right of way at each corner usable by all adjacent landowners.... problem solved. So the part I wonder about is whose idea that was and whether there was some ulterior motive behind it.
Over the history of our great country there has been many schemes that the powerful have used to abuse the power given them by the voters. Many of the seemingly stupid laws we have today are reactions to the corruption of the past. I'm always trying to understand it a little better without letting it absorb my mind a ruin my life.
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The transcontinental railways never would have built without the checkerboard giveaways. It's easy to demonize the railroads now, but there were no guarantees for the outlaying of capital that the railroads made to complete the transcontinental routes. At the time the government didn't have the capital to incentivies this, other than with land giveaways. Even with all the "free" land, Jim Hill promoted Washington apples to cover his costs
 
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How about a simple law that says there shall be passage where 2 public land parcels meet? Something akin to a road/bridge right away.

Of course it would be a federal law, so nothing is simple there...
 
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