The Checkerboard

Strange story and it seems like in most developed countries a grant of land in this way would necessarily be accompanied by a public right of way over the corners (and indeed without knowing too much about the case it seems like this is effectively what the court imposed).

Even the fact that the ranch manager got worked up about their having passed over what must have been two feet of private property at the very edge of the ranch leads me to believe that the ranch owner was effectively treating the public square as an extension of his land and recruiting the local authorities to act as his enforcers. All very Yellowstone-y.

This could have been avoided by allocating the private lots in groups of 2x3 as part of 3x4 rectangles, like so (each "##" is aone 1x1 lot):

    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |##|##|  |##|##|  |##|##|  
    +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

I'm glad the court case came down on the reasonable side that you can't effectively by half the land (as you buy more and more land of course) to gain control of the entire enclosed area which is clearly what all those land owners thought they could achieve. I wonder if they're going to actually buy the enclosed areas now?

If you haven't listened to the 99% Invisible podcast before, I highly recommend it. Each episode has a little synopsis, and each time I think "wow, this one's a stinker, I'm don't care about this at all," and then that evening my poor spouse has to listen to me talk on and on about the exciting random obscure world I've just been given a peek into. And there are hundreds of episodes.

I think a good recent starting episode may be "Towers of Silence." https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/

Publicise the name of the pharma executive and get everyone to mock him until he gets the hint that this (perfectly legal) dick-headery comes at a price and, perhaps, mellows.

It's always entertaining to hear such absurditites presented with a straight face. An alien studying our race would struggle to understand who would even care about this.

The obvious solution is, of course, to just allow people to pass on other's land. Maybe with some provisionings so ensure it isn't abused. You can already beathe the air legally, why not walk the ground legally?

Land "ownership" isn't really ownership in the physical sense anyway. You are allowed a certain set of rights, but you can't even mine your ground without permission, or dump toxic waste, or forbid planes to pass over. You could easily just decide to let people over on foot, too. It wouldn't take anything away from land rights.

History is written by the victors. This article is titled “The Checkerboard” but in another universe — one where the private landowners capture land by surrounding it on all four sides — it’s called…

The Goban: Taking Liberties

https://www.irish-go.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ko-full-...

The wild part here is that nobody in the 1860s "planned" this fight, but the incentives of that railroad grant scheme basically created a privatization hack that took 150 years to fully mature.

Checkerboard grants were sold as a compromise: give half to the railroad so they'll build, keep half so the public can "share in the upside" later. In practice, the private squares became de facto gatekeepers to the public ones, and once land got valuable enough (ranching, minerals, hunting rights, viewsheds), the optimal move for the private owner was to weaponize ambiguity in trespass law to extend control across the whole block.

Corner crossing is interesting because it attacks that hack at the most abstract layer: not fences, not roads, but the geometry of how you move through 3D space above a property line. If the court says "yes, you can legally teleport diagonally from public to public," a ton of latent "shadow enclosure" disappears overnight. If it says "no," it quietly ratifies a business model where you buy 50% of a checkerboard and effectively own 100%.

This is why the case drew such disproportionate firepower: it's not about four hunters and one elk mountain, it's about whether "public land" means you can actually go there, or just that it exists on a map while access gets gradually paywalled by whoever can afford the surrounding squares.

This makes me wonder when the government's plan changed. If the "checkerboard" was meant to hold land until it rose in value and then sell it, why are so many of those parcels public today?

What an unforced error (by the government).

No easements or anything.

That land has near zero public use, but you also didn’t get revenues from it. Worst of both worlds.

All for millions of public and private money to be spent trying to figure out your back asswards land ownership scheme.

Restricting access to land you don't own should be treated like theft.