We Corner Crossed the Wyoming Ranch That Started It All. Accessing Those Public Lands Is Still Complicated

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series on accessing public lands in Wyoming. Part Two focuses on accessing land-locked public ground by helicopter, and it will run later this month.

The first corner stood out, a 10-inch-tall steel survey stake flanked by two bright red No Trespassing signs attached to T-posts — a beacon in the rolling, grassy foothills.

Half our motley crew of six still stared at our phones, though. We followed our little blue onX dots as we hiked a section of Bureau of Land Management ground and stayed away from squares of private land. Our goal that day in November was to reach the top of Elk Mountain, an 11,160-foot hump of granite perched off Interstate 80. Lifelong Wyoming resident David Willms spent years of his childhood fishing a nearby reservoir flanked by Elk Mountain, dreaming about summiting it someday.

Until last year, the peak had been largely off limits to the public. Like millions of acres in the West, Elk Mountain is a checkerboard of public and private land. Corner-crossing like we were about to do was, until very recently, a legal gray area.

But then four hunters from Missouri placed a step ladder over a chain that, at the time, was strung across these very T-posts to prevent public access. That act (and their return trip hauling elk meat over the corner) sparked a years-long legal battle that resulted in a March decision by the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals saying the public could, in fact, corner cross to access public — as long as no one set foot on private land in the process.

Hikers like us probably won’t be cited for criminal trespass if we momentarily touch private ground when attempting to corner cross. That’s because we aren’t hunting and that section wasn’t posted with No Trespassing signs, as Wyoming law would require. (Hunters could, theoretically, be cited for criminal trespass if they egregiously missed the corner).

More pressing was the possibility of being sued for civil trespass, which comes with a minimum fine of $100, but potentially tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. To be found liable of civil trespass, the landowner must prove property damage. Is bending a blade of grass damage? It’s unclear.

And around this specific corner the private landowner, North Carolina pharmaceutical executive Fred Eshelman, has shown his willingness to sue. He initially claimed the Missouri hunters caused as much as $7.75 million in damages by saying corner crossing to access those public squares lowered his property value. Elk Mountain, as the name suggests, has abundant elk and first-class hunting. He claimed his property’s value came, in part, from the previously inaccessible public land squares. My calls to the ranch for comment about the trail cameras we saw on our hike and the potential for future lawsuits went unanswered.

None of us want to be sued. Yet we also didn’t want fear of litigation to keep the public from accessing land we have a legal right to enjoy. It’s why hiking to the summit isn’t a stunt for Willms. Not only had he wanted to climb the mountain since childhood, but this hike was also an exploratory mission — a way to see for himself the difficulties inherent in our newly-recognized ability to corner cross.

So we each stepped over the pin, likely placed by surveyors in the early 1900s, careful to touch only public land at the exact corner. We briefly wondered what they’d have thought if they’d known nearly a century later a corner they marked would be a source of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits and years of litigation.

Easy on Paper, Challenging in Practice

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the corner crossing case. In other words, the public can now legally access millions of previously inaccessible federal acres in six states: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

Corner crossing seems straightforward. We plant one foot on one public square and step over a survey pin to the other side. Our shoulders, hands, and arms may pass through private airspace because the 10^th Circuit Court ruled that’s not trespassing.

The court did not, however, rule that we have a buffer around those corner posts. Nor did it give the public permission to wander onto private land while looking for a survey marker or use GPS mapping services like onX Hunt as the final word on boundary lines.

Listen to the Podcast: I Corner Crossed the Wyoming Ranch That Started It All

That means to legally corner cross, hikers and hunters must be absolutely sure we know a corner’s location. On the ground, we did our utmost to responsibly corner-cross, finding ourselves glassing at distance for a gray survey stake that may or may not exist.

After crossing that first pin — no longer draped with the chain the Missouri hunters encountered years ago — we followed our digital maps across a section managed by the BLM. As we approached the next corner, we started looking for the second of five pins we must cross to reach the summit. Our party walked single file to minimize the chance of blundering onto private property.

“Found it,” someone at the front of the line said, and we craned our necks. The marker was tucked among scraggly mountain mahogany. Willms looked at the engraved stripes on the top of the coffee-cup-sized disk.

Most federal survey pins come with two lines crossed in the center and numbers in each corresponding corner. The numbers say which square is which, who owns what. Imagine extending those two-inch lines out in their corresponding directions, and you have a grid. Looking at the pin from a safe distance, identifying those lines, and then stepping from the verified public corner to the next is technically the only way to do it right.

Easy enough. So we each stepped over and continued on.

At the next corner, up a few hundred feet in elevation, the game changed considerably. Bunched single file again amid a forest of pines, our GPS indicated a corner where there should have been a pin, but no one could find it. We shuffled awkwardly in place, avoiding any possible private land.

“There’s a trail camera,” said Ella Willms, David’s 17-year-old daughter.

We all looked to our right and saw one strapped to a tree with a heavy cable and lock. It was aimed at the clearing where there should have been a pin. It didn’t change our behavior — we were doing this legally no matter what — but it did add a distinct Big Brother element to our hike.

A couple minutes later, Willms’ cousin, Tom McKenna, a Marine veteran, said he saw the pin. He was bending over, peering underneath the branch of a limber pine. We traded places to each take a look, then spent 30 minutes debating how, exactly, to cross without touching any private land.

“You have to look at the X on top. It’s the truth, the gospel,” said Wayne Heili, a retired uranium mining executive. He understood the complexities of land surveys as much as anyone there.

It is technically illegal to block access to a pin and public land with a fence or other manmade structure. The 10^th Circuit Court ruled this violates the Unlawful Enclosures Act. But this limber pine? We weren’t really sure where it fit in the puzzle of public-land access.

Fortunately, as the ancient tree grew, it split into several main trunks with the pin on the other side of the split. So after intense deliberation, we determined the gap between the trunks fell on the public-land side of the markers.

“This is a bizarre moment for humanity right now,” said Danny Dale, the University of Wyoming’s acting dean of engineering.

And he was right. We were here for the same reason most of us go outside: to escape from civilization’s inane nonsense and connect with nature. But instead, we were staring at our phones and trying not to get sued for going for a hike.

We chose to shimmy through and continue on.

Landowners vs. Corner-Crossing Hunters

The most law-abiding among us waited until the Supreme Court announcement to begin corner crossing. Those less concerned about possible legal troubles likely got started not long after the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals decision.

Many are following the law. Some aren’t. Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association and multigenerational rancher, said he’s heard from a few ranchers in the checkerboard that they’ve seen people cross their land in the vicinity of a corner, but certainly not at the corner.

“They’re taking advantage of the ability to corner cross as opposed to carefully using it,” he said.

Randy Newberg, the conservation advocate and hunting TV personality from Montana, said he’s largely noticed cooperation between landowners and hunters. He hunted elk in a chunk of Wyoming checkerboard this fall equipped with a metal detector, ladder, and GPS, only to discover that each pin had been flagged with orange reflective triangles used by truckers, red reflectors, or simple orange flagging.

Then he ran into the landowner. That rancher said people had been corner crossing over his property for years. As long as they’re sticking to the corners, he said, he didn’t care. 

“We read so much about the corner crossing case we think every landowner is like the plaintiff [who sued the Missouri hunters for trespassing],” Newberg said. “I’ve run into plenty of landowners that, when you sit down and talk to them, they’re not that worked up.”

Magagna, Newberg, other landowners and hunters wish there was some clarity to the rule — like what to do if survey stakes go missing. Magagna also wanted the public to understand the ruling only applies to federal land, so corner crossing between parcels of state land owned by Wyoming, for example, could be illegal.

Turned Back on a Technicality

Not far from the top of Elk Mountain, we had our own choice to make. We found the pin, and it wasn’t blocked by a curvy limber pine. But it was decidedly worse.

The pin was knocked sideways (likely by a falling tree, though who knows for sure) and was facing away from us. There was no way for us to tell exactly which squares are public and private as we got closer. To cross, would we be following the spirit of the law? Sure. Would we be exactly legal? Maybe not?

Willms was our guiding force. The hike to the summit had been his dream, and he’s also an attorney well versed in Wyoming law who spent years working for the state attorney general’s office and as a natural resources policy advisor for the governor. He knows the risks, and explained them clearly.

Ultimately the six of us stared at that fallen pin and decided we couldn’t cross with the knowledge we were fully legal. We didn’t reach the top of Elk Mountain that day. Willms didn’t stand on a peak he’s wanted to summit for decades.

Instead, we retraced our steps, slipping through that limber pine and placing our foot from one public square to another, armed with more questions than when we started. It’s illegal to tamper with federal property, which means no one is allowed to remove the markers essential for legal corner crossing. But it’s unclear how often they’re maintained. Willms plans to call the Bureau of Land Management — the agency that oversees these parcels of federal land — to report the crooked stake. Hopefully someone will straighten it out.

Video: A Landowner Stole My Buddy’s Public-Land Elk to Deter Us from ‘Hunting This Outfit’

In the meantime, will landowners become more frustrated and more aggressive with hunters and hikers as they try and access squares of public land? Will hunters and hikers become more reluctant to cross corners if they can’t immediately find those public squares?

Willms hopes that over time, cooler heads will prevail, trail cameras will come down, and hunters and hikers will approach these corners with caution. Because the rest of the West is watching how this all plays out.