Locked Out of Public Land: The Legal Puzzle of Corner Crossing
Julia Gavilondo
Litigation over corner crossing, moving between adjoining parcels of public land at a shared corner without actually touching private property, has surfaced a long-brewing access crisis on federally managed lands. What may appear at first glance to be a minor trespass dispute is really a structural problem rooted in nineteenth-century land policy and compounded by modern administrative drift and agency inaction.
Since the advent of the “checkerboard” system of land distribution in the 19th century there has been conflict between private landowners and the public’s access to public land.[1] Although millions of acres are, on paper, open to the public, access often depends on unresolved questions about trespass, airspace, and private exclusion.[2] The Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape litigation brings these issues into focus, in particular, raising the issue of whether corner crossing is a private property dispute or a public law issue about how federal agencies manage access to land that is held in trust for the American public.[3]
The roots of the dispute lie in the “checkerboard” pattern of land ownership created by nineteenth-century railroad land grants.[4] Congress conveyed alternating square-mile sections to railroad companies to incentivize westward expansion, leaving interspersed sections in federal hands.[5] The result is a mosaic across large swaths of the West, particularly in states like Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico, where public and private parcels meet only at their corners.[6]
The Unlawful Inclosures Act (UIA), passed in 1885, was the federal governments’ attempt at managing a newfound problem, private landowners enclosing public lands through strategic fence placement.[7] The UIA established that it was unlawful to enclose private lands adjacent to public lands in a way that made public lands in-accessible.[8] The UIA is one of the only pieces of legislation addressing the issue. Agencies, like the BLM, have done little to promulgate regulations related to accessing public lands and have instead relied on informal guidance, law enforcement discretion, and occasional land exchanges or easement negotiations.[9]
In theory, millions of acres managed by agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service are open to the public for recreation, hunting, and grazing.[10] In practice, access often depends on whether a member of the public can legally move from one public square to another without stepping on or physically touching the intervening private land that remains from the railroad land grants. Corner crossing is an attempt to solve this by allowing a person to pass from one public parcel to another at their shared corner.[11] Imagine stepping over the point where four squares meet. If no private land is touched, has a trespass occurred? The answer remains surprisingly unsettled.
In recent years new technology has opened the door to increased public land access. Apps like OnX provide users with information about what land is private, what is public, and where those public parcels meet.[12] This facilitates more access for the public but also has led to increased interaction between private landowners and public citizens. OnX led to the interaction between hunters and private landowners in Iron Bar Holdings.[13]
In Iron Bar Holdings, a Wyoming ranching company sued hunters who used a ladder to cross at a shared corner between public parcels, alleging civil trespass.[14] The litigation focused on whether passing through the column of airspace above the private parcels, without ever setting foot on them, constituted an unlawful intrusion.[15] Corner crossing occupies a weird middle ground regarding property rights. A passer does not touch private soil but will momentarily occupy the airspace near ground level. Whether that constitutes trespass depends on how expansively courts define the landowner’s exclusive domain.[16]
Yet the more important question is not how state trespass laws may classify a fleeting intrusion. It is whether federal land management statutes require agencies to ensure meaningful public access to lands designated for public use. The BLM manages lands under a multiple-use mandate which includes recreation.[17] If the public cannot lawfully reach certain parcels except by helicopter, can those lands meaningfully be described as “open to the public”?
Ultimately the Tenth Circuit concluded that the hunters had not committed trespass under the circumstances presented, but the case’s broader implications lie elsewhere. Iron Bar Holdings exposed the vacuum in federal regulatory guidance. Neither the BLM nor the Forest Service had promulgated clear rules defining whether corner crossing is permissible on lands they manage. Instead, agencies have historically relied on informal practices, sporadic enforcement, and case-by-case discretion.[18]
There are consequences for agency silence. When federal agencies do not articulate governing standards, courts can potentially default to a state’s property law. In doing so, it is possible that public access to federal land becomes contingent on private-law doctrine that was never designed to dictate federal land management policy.
Without rules promulgated by an agency, courts will continue to resolve disputes as they arise. That path carries risks. Judicial decisions are reactive and often fact specific. They may hinge on technical details, such as whether a ladder touches a fence, that potentially produce inconsistent outcomes across jurisdictions.[19]
Moreover, litigation-driven resolution may invite strategic behavior by landowners. Well-resourced landowners can threaten or pursue lawsuits to deter public access, even if ultimate liability is uncertain. The chilling effect may be sufficient to discourage recreationists from attempting corner crossings, effectively enclosing public land through intimidation rather than law.[20] And although Iron Bar Holdings addressed that any “barrier to access, even a civil trespass action” when its effect was to enclose public land could constitute an unlawful enclosure and is barred by the UIA, there is no nationwide standard leaving access to millions of acres up to private landowners.[21]
In addition to the threat of a lawsuit, a lack of clear standards may also have a chilling effect on the public. The BLM could go as far as promulgating a definitive rule permitting corner crossing at all intersections of private and federal public land. Agencies could also establish a regulatory safe harbor under which individuals who rely on publicly available land-status information and take reasonable steps to avoid private land are afforded a rebuttable presumption against trespass liability. These regulations could help quell the chilling effect created by agency silence and reduce opportunistic litigation by private landowners.
When agencies remain passive, they implicitly accept this dynamic. By allowing the courts to make these decisions they shift policymaking from the administrative sphere, where broad public interests can be weighed, to litigation between private parties. If federal agencies wish to preserve meaningful public use of the lands they manage, they cannot rely indefinitely on informal guidance and ought to develop and promulgate regulations allowing corner crossing.
[1] See Roy Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain 161-168 (1962); Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape, 131 F.4th 1153, (10th Cir. 2025).
[2] See Brief for Great Old Broads for Wilderness et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting Defendant-Appellees & Supporting Affirmance, at 6-11, Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape, 131 F.4th 1153 (10th Cir. 2025) (No. 23-8043); see Amanda Eggert, Access to Public Land Through Corner Crossing Remains Legal, High Country News(Mar. 20, 2025), https://www.hcn.org/articles/ access-to-public-land-through-corner-crossing-remains-legal/.
[3] Iron Bar Holdings, 131 F.4th at 1153.
[4] Id. at 1157-59.
[5] Christine A. Klein, Bret C. Birdsong, Alexandra B. Klass, Eric Biber & Dave Owen, Natural Resources Law 62-68 (5th ed. 2022).
[6] See id. at 66; Iron Bar Holdings, 131 F.4th at 1157-60.
[7] Camfield v. U. S., 167 U.S. 518, 518 (1897); Iron Bar Holdings, 131 F.4th at 1156; 43 U.S.C. § 1061.
[8] 43 U.S.C. §§ 1061, 1063; 167 U.S. at 528
[9]See U.S. Gen. Acct. Off., Federal Lands: Reasons for and Effects of Inadequate Public Access, GAO/RCED-92-116BR, at 18-26 (1992), https://gao.justia.com/department-of-agriculture/1992/4/federal-lands-rced-92-116br/RCED-92-116BR-full-report.pdf; See also Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, Wyoming Recreation Map (May 26, 2010), https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/documents /files/OEA_%20RecMap2010_FINAL_5-26-10.pdf.
[10] Recreation Activities, Bureau of Land Management, https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/recreation-activities (last visited Mar. 12, 2026); Land Management Planning, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/planning (last visited Mar. 12, 2026).
[11] Corner Crossing, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, https://www.backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/issues/access-and-opportunity/corner-crossing (last visited Mar. 12, 2026).
[12] Ben Ryder Howe, It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It, N.Y. Times (Nov. 26, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/business /hunting-wyoming-elk-mountain-access.html.
[13] Id.; 131 F.4th at 1161.
[14] 131 F.4th at 1163.
[15] Id. at 1161-62.
[16] Corner Crossing, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, https://www.backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/issues/access-and-opportunity/corner-crossing (last visited Mar. 12, 2026).
[17] 43 U.S.C. § 1701.
[18] GAO, Federal Lands: Reasons for and Effects of Inadequate Public Access, supra note 11, at 10-12.
[19] See Iron Bar Holdings, 131 F.4th at 1174.
[20] Brief for Great Old Broads for Wilderness et al., supra note 2 at 7-9.
[21] Checkerboarding and Public Land Access: Court Rulings Are Shaping Ranch Real Estate in the West, Swan Land Co. (Apr. 8, 2025), https://www.swanlandco.com/2025/04/08/public-land-access-checkerboarding-2025-ruling/; Corner Crossing, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers supra note 8.