Corner-crossing — hopping between public land parcels at points where the parcels’ corners meet with private land — should be legal in Wyoming, says a proposed bill for the Wyoming Legislature to consider this session.
“Those public lands, those belong to the people. Regardless of what your interest is, you own millions of acres of public land,” Wyoming House Minority Whip Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, told Cowboy State Daily.
That includes about 2.4 million acres of public land that is “corner locked” in checkerboard patterns with private parcels in Wyoming, she said.
To that end, she’s sponsoring House Bill 99 in the upcoming session, which begins Tuesday. It would codify corner-crossing as legal in Wyoming law.
The legality of corner-crossing remains murky. A trespassing case involving four out-of-state hunters set off years of wrangling in courts, eventually going in the hunters’ favor.
But the larger question of whether the public has the right to hop corners remains unsettled, and the Legislature, not the courts, should decide it, Provenza said.
“It’s the Legislature’s job to protect access to public land,” she said.
Avid public lands hunter and former game warden Shawn Blajszczak of Powell told Cowboy State Daily that he thinks it’s too early to speculate about the outcome of HB 99.
Meanwhile, he plans to err on the side of prudence when it comes to corner-crossing.
“I avoid doing it, but I couldn’t speak to the legality of it,” he said.
People who think they might need to corner-cross during their hunting trips should check with the local sheriff or county attorney of the county their hunting in, he added.
The Case That Started It All
In many places in Wyoming and across the West, it’s impossible to move from one section of public land to other without crossing the corners where those two sections meet in a pinpoint.
Opponents of corner-crossing say that can’t be done without setting foot on private land, or at the very least violating the private air space over it.
That can drive down the value of private land, corner-crossing opponents argue. Many potential buyers value seclusion and will shy away from buying properties that could have crowds passing through as they hop corners.
The matter came to head in September 2021, when four elk hunters from Missouri used a ladder-like device to cross a corner adjacent to land on the Iron Bar Ranch near Elk Mountain.
The hunters — Bradley Cape, Zachary Smith, Phillip Yoemens and John Slowensky — were accused of trespassing by Iron Bar Holdings LLC and its owner, Fred Eshelman of North Carolina.
The hunters were charged with trespassing, and the matter went to trial. A Carbon County jury later found the hunters innocent of trespassing.
With the criminal case settled, Iron Bar Holdings and Eshelman took the matter to civil court. They claimed that the hunters had violated the ranch’s air space and devalued ranch by millions of dollars. The civil case was also decided in the hunters’ favor.
But the question of whether corner-crossing is legal across Wyoming wasn’t answered, Provenza said. And she doesn’t want to see it dragged into court again.
“From my perspective, I wasn’t willing to let the courts make a decision when people’s rights are on the line,” she said.
Wealthy Out-Of-Staters
Hunters aren’t the only ones concerned about corner-crossing.
Gary Beauvais, director of the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database at the University of Wyoming, previously told Cowboy State Daily that the murky legality of crossing corners frequently hampers scientists trying to do field research.
Provenza said she’s heard from that constituency, as well as outdoor recreationists and others frustrated by what they see as unjustly restricted access to public land.
Wyoming is seeing an influx of wealthy out-of-staters buying up land, frequently in places where it’s checkerboarded with public parcels, she said. HB 99 will allow Wyoming to get ahead of potential problem by making corner-crossing unquestionably legal.
Otherwise, wealthy landowners “will spend piles of money to keep the people of Wyoming from having access to those public lands,” she said.
Contact Mark Heinz at mark@cowboystatedaily.com
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
