After stumbling along a path riven with amendments, debate and opposition, a bill to codify already legal corner crossing died Monday in the Wyoming Senate.
After an hour of toilsome back-and-forth, the upper chamber refused with a 27-4 vote to advance House Bill 19, “Corner crossing clarification.” The measure sought to simplify a 49-page civil-suit decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that held a landowner cannot block public access to public land in the checkerboard landscape across southern Wyoming. That decision effectively legalized the practice of corner crossing in Wyoming and five other states within the 10th Circuit’s jurisdiction.
The Legislature’s Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee over several months last year drafted an 85-word addition to existing Wyoming laws that reflected the appeals court decision. The measure would give trespass-enforcing law officers a simple statute instead of a legal tome.
The bill upheld the Wyoming district court decision that “corner-crossing on foot in the checkerboard pattern of land ownership without physically contacting private land and without causing damage to private property does not constitute an unlawful trespass.”
The measure would have applied that standard to state and federal property across Wyoming, assuring the public unbadgered access to 2.4 million acres considered “corner locked.”
The court ruling disgruntled ranchers, who argued against corner crossing from the get-go.
Agriculture groups came down on the side of the owner of the Elk Mountain Ranch in Carbon County who unsuccessfully sued four hunters who corner crossed, claiming they trespassed by traversing through the airspace above his property. By stopping corner crossing, ranch owner Fred Eshelman, a hunter himself, would have limited who hunted on the public land enmeshed in his 20,000-plus-acre wildlife-rich property.
In the Legislature, one amendment immediately narrowed the public access that the appeals court had affirmed. It stated that corner crossers could not touch property — which would include access-barring fences — as well as land.
The simple became complex as the bill moved forward. “People don’t like this bill,” Sen. Stacy Jones, a Rock Springs Republican who had advocated for access, said as the upper house led the measure to its demise.
A major problem
Corner crossing is the act of stepping from one piece of public property to another where the two abut at a single point. It is employed in the checkerboard pattern of land ownership where square-mile sections of property are owned alternately by private parties and the public.
Corner crossers do not set foot on or touch private land, but they necessarily pass through the airspace above it. The appeals court found the practice legal in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Some ranchers, landowners and county prosecutors have long pursued corner crossing as a trespass. New, well-heeled out-of-state ranch buyers have exacerbated the conflict between private property rights and public access to public land.
“We have a major problem,” Sen. Charlie Scott, a Casper Republican, said. Out-of-staters are buying swaths of land, “and they seem to have a tendency to put out a no-trespassing sign.
“They enclose a bunch of the state land, and they fix it so you can’t get there,” Scott said “We are losing our constituents’ ability to go hunting in their own neighborhoods.”
That hampers the state’s ability to cull burgeoning elk populations, Scott said. “We’re losing control of the herds.”
But the bill itself was veering out of control before it reached the Senate. Making fences off limits to physical contact set off hunting advocates.
“This bill does seem to provide more confusion than it does clarity as it was intended,” said Pete Madsen, co-chair of the Wyoming Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.
Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna wanted to exclude state trust lands from corner crossing. Sen. Larry Hicks, a Republican from Baggs, sought another change to state land access, which was followed by an amendment to an amendment and so on.
Hunting advocate Sabrina King underscored one aspect of corner crossing that some landowners might find irksome. Wyoming law states that hunters are responsible for knowing they are not trespassing.
However, “when you get into court, it is on the prosecution to show that trespass actually occurred.”
One solution Hicks proposed was to limit corner crossing to sites where legal survey markers exist. Without the survey marker amendment “you’re going to legalize trespass over 75% of the state of Wyoming,” Hicks said.
But too many corners are unmarked, lawmakers said, and Hicks’ effort failed. Already, the bill was breathing its last gasps.
Sen. Bill Landen, a Casper Republican who shepherded the measure through several committee meetings last year, was resigned.
“If this bill goes quietly to rest this evening, I wish whoever well who’s going to take this up in the future, because it’s not going away.”
For more legislative coverage, click here.
Kudos to those that want to codify the legal precident. Shame on you, to those think they can change it and make it stricter! The 10th Circuit decision makes it clear that the public can cross corners to access their public land.