I can see the patio umbrellas flying in my mind, and it makes me chuckle.I see a business opportunity. Start a helicopter shuttle, preferably with a twin-rotor Chinook,, and ferry 20 or so people plus gear to and from those public lands. Of course, the pilot should fly just above the landowner's "airspace" and use the landowner's mansion for visual navigation -- especially after dark or before sunrise. Keep the machine gun mounts for self-defense.
Yes, I suffer from passive-agressive fantasies.
Public Access (NY Times)
- Thread starter kmudgn
- Start date
I agree. That’s usually what a subsidy is.
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Old406Kid
Legend
We're kind of in the flight path so I'm wondering if I might be able to charge the airlines a nominal fee for flying over my house.
Heck, I might even be able to send Elon a bill for his overhead space junk.
I think the airspace component of this could have the biggest potential impact on fisherman. Are you trespassing when floating a river where landowners owns the river bottom? Even if you are not anchored? Could I get ticketed drifting over privately owned tidelands in Puget Sound at high tide if I am not anchored? Me and my boat are technically in their airspace.
Old406Kid
Legend
Or perhaps a lower budget option.I see a business opportunity. Start a helicopter shuttle, preferably with a twin-rotor Chinook,, and ferry 20 or so people plus gear to and from those public lands. Of course, the pilot should fly just above the landowner's "airspace" and use the landowner's mansion for visual navigation -- especially after dark or before sunrise. Keep the machine gun mounts for self-defense.
Yes, I suffer from passive-agressive fantasies.
Gyrfalcon22
Legend
Where I am from- nearish the coast and in low flood pond farmland, there is a present battle with land access and hunters. The older farmers die off and outside money takes over. What used to be a sane number of local people getting permission from farmers that they generationally would often hay for in the summer is now private clubs with high priced memberships. It is now complex. Adding far more outside folks dropping by (such as from Joint Base/Tacoma) there is a big traffic jam of people wanting to access properties. People driving 100+ miles one way to see if they can squeeze into a pond.
Solutions? Game department gives some kick-back to farmers who let hunters on. Thing is, leasing land to hunters is soon going to outpace the crop value for lands. Bigtime buyers are moving in. Or, bidding wars between $ folks/clubs or feeble offers from game department will be the norm.
I suspect the general public will be SOL unless dept of fish and game buy more land.
Solutions? Game department gives some kick-back to farmers who let hunters on. Thing is, leasing land to hunters is soon going to outpace the crop value for lands. Bigtime buyers are moving in. Or, bidding wars between $ folks/clubs or feeble offers from game department will be the norm.
I suspect the general public will be SOL unless dept of fish and game buy more land.
This is also what is interesting to me. Take Colorado, for example, where making contact with the river bottom on private land is trespassing (i.e. landowners own the river bottom). However, you can float through private property as long as you don't contact the river bottom (i.e. on navigable waterways the public owns the water itself). Introduce the concept of airspace and suddenly there's another variable at play...you would be penetrating the "private airspace" of the landowner floating through on publicly owned water and suddenly the option of floating is no longer viable. What a convoluted mess...just fishing lakes is starting to seem way easier.
Also, if the 7-million lawsuit is based upon the perception that the value of the private landowner's property has been reduced by the public now knowing that it has access to public property that was previously perceived as trapped (and hence basically private property), then I think the private landowner should be taxed on whatever the value of that entrapped property is unless they allow a public right-of-way to access it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I did a little looking around and found there are a number of apps that claim to show public and private lands. I created an account on BaseMap so I could get a closer look but if you want any useful detail you need the "pro" version at $30+/year. Any of you guys using these apps, like OnX or BaseMap? If so which and what is your assessment.
Or simply say that it is theft of a public resource, and send them to jail. Like that would ever happen…
I keep both the public and private land layers handy on Gaia Maps to help me when fishing in W WA.
Not really a giveaway. The U.S. gov't. gave the land to the railroads in return for building those railroads with private funding, thereby improving "public access" to the western frontier. Kind of like if the state or federal gov't gave a private company part of the public right-of-way to build a highway without using public funds. Glad we didn't do that!
I think what Congress or the court should be looking at is gov't intent. Did the gov't intend that private property owners should be able to "lock up" access to public land, or was a right-of-way access implied in the land grant?
Give Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It In the World a read. Describes the building of the transcontinental railroad and the allocation of land to the railroads resulting in today's checkerboard pattern.
A
Anonymous member 148
Guest
I tried the free trial, I was too ADD to figure it out at the time then it expired. I think it's 8$ a month, worth it if you utilize it a lot.
Still, the railroads were able to finance the building of the roads from the value of the land they were given, plus the payments per mile, and they ended up with ownership of the right of ways. Fortunes were made, and while the US benefitted from it, it was still a huge gift to the companies involved in building the railways.
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)
And then the railroads printed up brochures extolling the virtues of places like Eastern Washington to convince people to move out here and settle the land. Most were hoodwinked when they discovered the steppe shrub environment, marauding jackrabbits, and sand.
Millsfly
Steelhead
All. the. time. aside of the great hunting attributes, OnX is killer because you can offline map big swaths of ground that you then can turn your phone into a GPS outside of cell range. I do this a lot when floating a new river and I know exactly where I am and where the take out is. I loath floating and not knowing where the get out is....this solves that completly
HauntedByWaters
Life of the Party
Agreed. That would at least make it fair so that these “public” places aren’t like private hunting reserves.