Federal judges clarify longstanding corner-crossing conundrum for Coloradans wanting to access public lands

In a decision that protects access to millions of acres of public land across the West, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver has found that hunters who stepped from one parcel of federally managed land to another did not violate the property rights of an owner of adjacent parcels. 

Land ownership in the West is defined by tidy squares. But that checkerboard of public and private land poses a navigational quandary for recreational users. When they step diagonally from one parcel of public land to another, are they violating the private airspace of landowners whose private property intersects with public land at that checkerboard X?

The three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit on Tuesday ruled that so-called corner crossers are not trespassing, siding with Wyoming hunters who were sued for trespass in 2022 by a ranch owner whose 50 square-mile ranch in Carbon County includes 27 federal parcels totaling 11,000 acres. A local jury found the men not guilty of trespassing, spurring the civil lawsuit from the landowner.

The North Carolina pharmaceutical mogul who owns the Elk Mountain Ranch near the Medicine Bow National Forest in south-central Wyoming claimed as much as $7.75 million in damages, arguing his property value was diminished by the hunters who used a steel A-frame ladder to step across adjoining corners of private and public land where the owner had erected chains and No Trespassing signs. A Wyoming District Court judge in 2023 sided with the four Missouri hunters, who did not touch the private ground when they stepped over their ladder onto public land adjacent to Elk Mountain Ranch in 2021. 

Ranch owner Fred Eshelman appealed the ruling to the 10th Circuit in a case that would have impacted access to millions of land-locked public acres. 

“While the dispute may seem trivial, at its core, it implicates centuries of property law and the settlement of the American West,” reads the 51-page 10th Circuit ruling written by Judge Timothy Tymkovich that detailed more than a century of property disputes and rulings. “This case turns on the interplay of state and federal law enacted against the backdrop of private settlement of public lands and the property disputes that inevitably followed among rival interests.”

There is no law that specifically prohibits stepping over private land to reach public land. But landowners have challenged corner crossing in recent years. Lawmakers in Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and Colorado have tried and failed to craft rules that protect the right of recreational users — mostly hunters and anglers — to step through private airspace to reach public land. 

The Missouri hunters were using the onX app when they returned to the area in 2021 after their initial visit in 2020. This time they hoisted their A-frame ladder to avoid touching the ranch’s fenceposts to access public land in Carbon County, which the 10th Circuit said “has been at the epicenter of a 150-year conflict touching on the core of property law and, simultaneously, defining the American West.”

An ongoing study by OnX and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership estimates nearly 16 million acres of federal and state land in the West are surrounded by private land and “corner-locked” without permanent, legal access. The corner-crossing conundrum is not as acute in Colorado — where the projects shows 704,000 landlocked public acres — compared to Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona, where 12.7 million acres are surrounded by private land and not clearly accessible. 

A host of public lands advocacy groups cheered the 10th Circuit ruling. (Emails to the ranch’s attorney ws not immediately returned.)“Today’s decision clarifies that public lands really are public,” said Tom Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office, in a statement. “This case was about a multi-millionaire trying to prevent access to public lands so he could have it for himself. We’re grateful that the Tenth Circuit has rejected that unjust land-grab attempt and affirmed the public’s right to access and enjoy public lands.”