Logging created a checkerboard pattern in northern california...
Logging created a checkerboard pattern in northern california...
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That's mostly right, but as with a lot of these kinds of things, it's more complicated than that. Some of these checkerboard patterns were caused by systematic deforestation to help build the early railroads, but the checkerboard pattern itself comes from the way the federal government subdivided and sold Native American land to private individuals. It all goes back to the Dawes Act and our exploitation of indigenous tribes.
From a 2012 Democracy Now interview:
Eastern Navajo has a lot of—what we call the checkerboard area, and there’s these individual Indian allotments, which were created through the Dawes Act. And because of this individual ownership, Navajo allottees, they have the right to lease their land. And so, what the company does is they target individuals in our community, and they really, you know, use this divide-and-conquer tactic. And what they’re doing is basically promising all these riches and basically monetary gain for an already poor community that doesn’t even—a lot of our people don’t even have running water or electricity. And so, some of the individuals are dependent on this—on these promises of a false economy and jobs and all these good things that they—that they say they’re going to do.
It has caused a lot of problems for the tribes and their sovereignty.
Beginning with the Dawes Act of 1887, Native Americans, including the Navajo, were assigned plots of reservation land on which to practice subsistence farming. This was an attempt to assimilate Native Americans into Western European land use and domestication practices.
The checkerboard mix of lands owned by tribes, trust lands, fee lands, and privately-owned tracts severely impedes on the Navajo nation's ability to farm, ranch, or utilize the land for other economic purposes. Problems of mixed jurisdiction (tribal, federal, state, or county) have also contributed to economic instability, as well as to racial tensions and community conflicts. Source
Oh yay, reality is even worse than the headline!
This weird geometrically square way of demarcating properties has created yet another headache-inducing clusterfuck, and has led to much scuttlebutt about the curious concept of "corner hopping" or "corner crossing" and its legal status. I.e., consider properties laid out in the following arrangement:
A│B ─┼─ C│DYou are legally standing on property A and know the land owner of of property D who has given you permission to hunt on his land, or whatever. The owners of properties B and C have told you in no uncertain terms that they don't want you on their land even for one single nanosecond, not even violating its airspace -- let's say for no less plausible of a reason than your ancestors fucked them over by unilaterally deciding that they get to cut up and give away their land.
The property lines terminate in two fences joining in a cross. Is it legal for you to hop the fence from property A to D, or if you did so does it count as trespassing on properties B and C?
In a legal sense, can a person move like a bishop, conceptually infinitely thin provided you have no intent to access the land on either side of you, mathematically bisecting a point? Or do you actually move like a knight, unavoidably albeit temporarily occupying either of those squares for an infinitesimal but legally nontrivial amount of time?
Interesting legal problem, but I object to the chess metaphor: knights more than any other chess piece do not occupy any intermediary spaces between where they start and land.
I would just get there by castling. But how to get back?
Holy shit that’s fascinating. This never would have crossed my mind unless I somehow found myself standing at the intersection of four square properties. Such a quintessentially American legal dispute.
Assuming the fence has shared ownership between the owners of the properties it separates I'd say as long as you remain on the fence and only touch property A and D then it is not trespassing as you have shared ownership/permission for 50% of the fence so it's your right to use the fence as you wish as long as there is no damage or you take responsibility for and repair that damage. the airspace exclusion should only apply for extended assisted travel in an aircraft or use of a drone. Honestly seems trivial to me, much more trivial even than retrieving an item a la a ball accidentally thrown too far.
But Ianal..