The Checkerboard

The Checkerboard(99percentinvisible.org)

89 points by thread_id 156 days ago | 38 comments

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.

bryanlarsen 155 days ago | |

In Western Canada it's called the "road allowance". The edge of your land that you can farm if the municipality hasn't turned it into a road. But if you farm it you have still have to allow access.

cassepipe 155 days ago | |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_way#Tad

JKCalhoun 155 days ago | |

And some people just really trip on having even a small degree of power.

sltkr 155 days ago |

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):

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

This would allow the public to retain 50% of the land, while making sure people are able to pass private lots without trespassing, as well as allowing individual lot owners to access their land without trespassing.

noitpmeder 155 days ago | |

But you see, when these rule were being framed bad actors PLANNED on exploiting the checkerboard to expand their effective control. (Or at least it seems so obvious of an issue that I have to imagine _someone_ was scheming along these lines).

zczc 155 days ago | |

The initial idea was to first sell 50% of the land and then sell the other 50%. [1] Thanks to corner crossing, the checkerboard pattern made sure that owners of the first batch wouldn't be cut off from their access by buyers of the second batch.

[1] From TFA: "This checkerboard pattern allowed the government to keep all the undeveloped sections in between and wait for them to go up in value before turning around and selling them to developers".

rtkwe 155 days ago | | |

I think that's more than likely just a fig leaf proposed for and by the people that planned to try to only have to by ~50% of the land they actually wanted to enclose. So much of this land is too far away from anything for much meaningful development.

rtkwe 156 days ago |

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?

Simulacra 156 days ago | |

Reminds me of the battle for beach access in California

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 156 days ago | | |

Sounds like we aren't taxing the land hard enough

xorcist 156 days ago |

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.

rcxdude 155 days ago | |

It's a thing in other countries. Scotland has the 'right to roam' which basically allows anyone responsible access to private land by most non-motorised means. It obviously doesn't extend to people's houses and gardens, and there's also exclusions for fields with crops (but not livestock) and hunting/fishing. But you can hike, bike, horse-ride, canoe, or camp on someone else's land so long as you aren't causing any mess or trouble.

em-bee 155 days ago | |

germany has that. effectively you have to provide a path or road where your neighbor can pass through your property, if that is the only way to reach the property. you can only choose where to put the road, but not to not allow someone to pass.

kiney 155 days ago | | |

"Notwegerecht" is very rare in reality, AND the user has to pay. In general in germamy it is historically much more common that these situations don't arise because when land gets sold a prooer deal for regular "Wegerecht" is made. But it does happen.

PetriCasserole 155 days ago | |

Also, do you own something if it can be forcibly taken away when you don't pay an annual fee? Rent or tax, call it what you want, the outcome is the same if you don't pay.

CobrastanJorji 156 days ago |

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/

smitty1e 155 days ago |

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.

gnatman 155 days ago | |

Fred Eshelman founded Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc in 1985. In 2010, he became the founding chair of Furiex Pharmaceuticals. Currently he is chairman of The Medicines Company, CEO of Innocrin Pharmaceuticals, and founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC.

He has an estimated net worth of $300M and fell for Donald Trump’s stolen election grift.

https://wbt.com/576/nc-man-sues-pro-trump-group-for-return-2...

paulddraper 156 days ago |

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.

sfblah 156 days ago | |

This is a great point. It would make a lot more sense simply to require a 25-foot easement along the lines of the checkerboard for unrestricted public access or a road. That would have the effect of forcing the ranchers to move their fences back ~12 feet.

In compensation, ranchers could be given the right to create structures or rights-of-way on those same easements to connect their diagonal pieces so as to make them more useable, as long as the public has a reasonable right to access their areas.

This situation honestly makes me wonder how the ranchers even use these squares, since they face the exact same access problem, just with the opposite corners.

paulddraper 155 days ago | | |

> they face the exact same access problem, just with the opposite corners

They don’t face the same access problems.

They can cross public land.

aetherson 156 days ago | | |

But they don't have the same access problem because the public squares don't have access restrictions.

gorgoiler 156 days ago |

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-...

praptak 156 days ago |

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

takira 156 days ago |

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?

dcrazy 156 days ago | |

My understanding from the episode is that the plan was never for the public lands to grow in value. The private lands were given away or sold as incentives, and the owners could choose to capitalize off them immediately (e.g. as soon as the railroad reached nearby) or hold onto them for profit.

freak42 156 days ago | | |

But this is verbatim what the article saud, you should have read it: "This checkerboard pattern allowed the government to keep all the undeveloped sections in between and wait for them to go up in value before turning around and selling them to developers."

WastedCucumber 156 days ago | |

I wonder if they really have all that much value now. Barring any particularly lucrative natural resources, if one publically owned square is surrounded by private owners, who have the right to restrict travel, then that kind of heavily limits the market, doesn't it? And by that, presumably the price is limited as well.

brian_spiering 155 days ago |

The Sierra Nevada region has a similar history of using the "checkerboard" pattern to promote railroad building. Organizations like the Trust for Public Land and the Truckee Donner Land Trust that are systematically acquiring many of these checkerboard inholdings to preserved them from future development and open them to low-impact public recreation.

thread_id 155 days ago |

If you haven't done so yet it is worth the time to read the long history of this as outlined in the court case -

https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/0101...

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