An appellate court opened millions of acres of U.S. public lands, emboldening a broad coalition of environmental advocacy.
The American West has long been associated with wild landscapes, many of which are publicly owned as national parks, forests, and grasslands. But until recently, the public’s ability to access some of this land remained uncertain because it is surrounded by private land.
An appellate court’s decision last year approved access to 3.5 million acres of “corner-locked” public lands that connect only at the discrete points where the parcel corners touch. The decision allows hikers, hunters, and recreationists to traverse diagonally across a “checkerboard” of land parcels that are otherwise bordered on all four sides by private property. The legal battle over these checkerboard public lands has also mobilized a broad coalition of conservationists and environmentalists that could address other land use challenges in the future.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to review the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape. In doing so, it cemented access to millions of acres of public land across Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Although the Tenth Circuit’s decision is technically only binding in these states because they fall within that appellate court’s jurisdiction, other courts reviewing access to about 8 million acres of similarly situated corner-locked public lands across other states may look to the decision for guidance.
The legality of “corner-crossing” matters for private landowners and federal lands users due to an extensive pattern of “checkerboarding” in many Western states. The public lands checkerboard is much like any other checkerboard, but instead of alternating black and white colors, it is the parcel ownership that varies from square to square. The result is a grid in which agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management administer the black squares, while ranchers and private landowners control the white ones. And just like in checkers, the only way to move from black square to black square—from public parcel to public parcel—is diagonally, through corner-crossing.
This checkerboard pattern of land ownership originated during the United States’ westward expansion, with Congress first dividing territory in the Land Ordinance of 1785 and later distributing it to settlers through the Preemption Act of 1841 and the Homestead Act. During this period, Congress also subsidized the development of railroads by granting them ownership of every other parcel in a 10-mile-wide strip as they laid tracks westward.
Land was divided and distributed despite indigenous claims, with some historians viewing railroad development as a key factor in forcing Native American tribes onto reservations. Eventually, the federal government retained ownership of all lands not granted to railroads and claimed by settlers, creating a checkerboard of alternating private and public squares.
In 2020 and 2021, across southeastern Wyoming’s checkerboard landscape, four elk hunters corner-crossed between various parcels owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the State of Wyoming, while avoiding the private ranch land owned by Iron Bar Holdings. To discourage corner-crossing, Iron Bar placed signposts with chains strung across the diagonal crossing points, but the hunters came prepared with a small folding ladder, allowing them to climb over Iron Bar’s makeshift fences.
Iron Bar initially requested that the local prosecutor press criminal charges. The hunters were acquitted, but Iron Bar later filed its own lawsuit for civil trespass, claiming that when the hunters corner-crossed, they violated the immediate airspace directly over Iron Bar’s private property. Although the Tenth Circuit agreed that this temporary encroachment could constitute a trespass under Wyoming state law, that appellate court also determined that a federal land-use statute from 1885, the Unlawful Enclosures Act, was actually the binding source of law.
The Unlawful Enclosures Act states that no person “shall prevent or obstruct free passage or transit over or through public lands.” The appeals court held that, so long as members of the public do not “physically touch” private property, they cannot be denied access to federal public lands.
This appellate decision has immediate implications for millions of acres of corner-locked public lands across the western United States. It could also generate legal challenges to expand access to fully landlocked parcels—islands of public land entirely surrounded by private land. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) estimates that up to 16 million acres of public land across 22 states are either corner-locked or entirely landlocked and inaccessible.
The legal battle over corner-crossing has mobilized a broad coalition of conservation advocates and environmental organizations. Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA) filed a brief in support of the hunters, and Earthjustice did the same, representing a coalition of environmental nonprofits.
Groups such as BHA and TRCP trace their roots to the conservationism movement in the United States, which emphasized sustainable stewardship of natural resources but has evolved to support wilderness preservation. More modern organizations, such as Earthjustice, generally embrace this philosophy while also promoting biodiversity, environmental justice, and climate change mitigation, as part of the environmentalism movement. Although conservationism tends to draw more support from political conservatives, environmentalism is more associated with individuals with left-leaning political views.
Despite these organizations’ different philosophies, their briefs in the Iron Bar Holdings case were largely aligned. Both BHA and Earthjustice supported the hunters’ legal claims and described the experiences of individuals who had been denied access and even assaulted while trying to visit public lands. Both organizations also voiced concerns about equal access to open spaces and extolled the virtues of the great outdoors for individuals of all economic backgrounds.
Some experts see public lands management as increasingly central to environmental policy. As a result, the temporary coalition of conservationists and environmentalists could become a more permanent and important partnership. Recently, both BHA and Earthjustice separately opposed a land sale amendment introduced by U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). The organizations also separately issued statements opposing the Trump Administration’s proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule, which currently prohibits road construction for uses such as logging and mining on certain public lands and has been in effect since 2001.
If these recent shared advocacy efforts by conservationists and environmentalists are viewed in combination with their joint efforts to open up corner-locked lands, they may signal a deeper alignment across a broader range of environmental issues in the years to come.
