Revised Statute 2477, commonly known as RS 2477 was enacted by the United States Congress in 1866 to encourage the settlement of the Western United States by the development of a system of highways. Its entire text is one sentence: "the right-of-way for the construction of highways across public lands not otherwise reserved for public purposes is hereby granted."
The original grant did not require being recorded, meaning it was self-enacting, and in 1866 constructing a road often meant using a trail many times and perhaps filling low places, moving rocks and placing signs.
It granted to counties and states a right-of-way across federal land when a highway was built.
RS 2477 was repealed in 1976 under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The repeal was subject to "valid existing rights." The relevant text (Sec. 701. 43 U.S.C. 1701) reads (a) "Nothing in this Act, or in any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed as terminating any valid lease, permit, patent, right-of-way, or other land use right or authorization existing on the date of approval of this Act". [1]
Shared-access advocates claim that neither the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service nor other federal agencies, nor even private landowners have the authority to close RS 2477 roads. Their interpretation of the statute has brought them into conflict with wilderness advocates, the federal government and private landowners.
RS 2477 has become an issue for wilderness advocacy groups because of language in the Wilderness Act of 1964. According to Section 2 (c) 3, any area to be considered for wilderness status must contain "a least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition." Section 4 (c) further specifies, "Except as specifically provided for in this Act, and subject to existing private rights, there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act". [2] Thus an RS 2477 "highway" which qualifies as a "road" could disqualify the land it traverses from being recognized by the federal government as a "wilderness" if it reduced the area under consideration beneath the 5,000 acre limit.
Access advocates have sometimes organized to reopen or maintain what they consider to be legitimate RS 2477 roads. [3] The Jarbidge Shovel Brigade [4] is the best-known group that was formed for this purpose.
Landowners, environmental organizations, government organizations (federal, state and county) and recreational-use advocates have very different understandings of the law. Conflicts among these groups came to a head when President Bill Clinton declared the Grand Staircase–Escalante, in southern Utah, to be a National Monument. Several Utah counties have been fighting in court to assert RS 2477 claims to roads that cross federal and private property, [5] including across the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently authorized interior representatives to negotiate federal recognition of RS 2477 roads for which there is a clear historical record. [6] In August 2010, quiet title of the Skutumpah Road, within the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, [7] was granted to Kane County, Utah. [8]
As western lands become developed into residential subdivisions, motorized recreationists and sportsmen are continuing to claim access rights on privately constructed, owned, and maintained roads that cross private land and gated communities. Because some disputed roads were never recorded by counties, shared-access groups claim that private landowners hold property with an unrecorded public right-of-way. Property rights advocates say that failure to record a right-of-way means that there was no intention to create a public right.
Shared-access groups argue that lack of formal action by counties does not diminish the public’s easement/usufruct rights through private lands. They have engaged in threats, trespassing, and vandalism [9] to vigorously assert those rights.
Private property activists claim that nobody has access rights without a recorded easement. Shared-access activists claim that virtually all private land that used to be public can legally be traversed by the public. There is little common ground between these interpretation, so lawsuits are being fought in the western United States, and it has fallen to the courts to determine which routes are public and which are not.
Courts have applied state laws, federal laws, and federal land court rulings to resolve RS 2477 claims. Recent examples of failed attempts to assert RS 2477 rights on private property are Galli v. Idaho County (Case Number CV 36692, Second Judicial District of Idaho, 2006) [10] and Ramey v. Boslough (Case Number 02-CV-582, Boulder County District Court, 20th Judicial District of Colorado, 2007). [11] An RS 2477 case involving County Road 200 in Garfield County, Colorado, was decided in favor of the county on December 23, 2020, in the U.S. District Court of Colorado by Judge R. Brooke Jackson. [12] The plaintiff, High Lonesome Ranch, has appealed to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Escalante is a city in central Garfield County, Utah, United States, located along Utah Scenic Byway 12 (SR-12) in the south-central part of the state. As of the 2020 census, 786 people were living in the city.
In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking occurs when governmental regulations limit the use of private property to such a degree that the landowner is effectively deprived of all economically reasonable use or value of their property. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution governments are required to pay just compensation for such takings. The amendment is incorporated to the states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Eminent domain is the power to take private property for public use. It does not include the power to take and transfer ownership of private property from one property owner to another private property owner without a valid public purpose. This power can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized to exercise the functions of public character.
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante in southern Utah. It was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the authority of the Antiquities Act with 1.7 million acres of land, later expanded to 1,880,461 acres (7,610 km2). In 2017, the monument's size was reduced by half in a succeeding presidential proclamation, and it was restored in 2021. The land is among the most remote in the country; it was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents the power to proclaim national monuments by executive action. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
The freedom to roam, or everyone's right, every person's right or everyman's right, is the general public's right to access certain public or privately owned land, lakes, and rivers for recreation and exercise. The right is sometimes called the right of public access to the wilderness or the right to roam.
Riparian water rights is a system for allocating water among those who possess land along its path. It has its origins in English common law. Riparian water rights exist in many jurisdictions with a common law heritage, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and states in the eastern United States.
In the American legal system, prior appropriation water rights is the doctrine that the first person to take a quantity of water from a water source for "beneficial use" has the right to continue to use that quantity of water for that purpose. Subsequent users can take the remaining water for their own use if they do not impinge on the rights of previous users. The doctrine is sometimes summarized, "first in time, first in right".
The Sagebrush Rebellion was a movement in the Western United States in the 1970s and the 1980s that sought major changes to federal land control, use, and disposal policy in 13 western states in which federal land holdings include between 20% and 85% of a state's area. Supporters of the movement wanted more state and local control over the lands, if not outright transfer of them to state and local authorities and/or privatization. As much of the land in question is sagebrush steppe, supporters adopted the name "Sagebrush Rebellion."
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance(SUWA) is a wilderness preservation organization in the United States based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with field offices in Washington, D.C. and Moab, Utah. The organization formed in 1983 and is a partner in the Utah Wilderness Coalition, a coalition of organizations nationwide that support federal wilderness designation for deserving public lands in Utah.
Trespass to land, also called trespass to realty or trespass to real property, or sometimes simply trespass, is a common law tort or a crime that is committed when an individual or the object of an individual intentionally enters the land of another without a lawful excuse. Trespass to land is actionable per se. Thus, the party whose land is entered upon may sue even if no actual harm is done. In some jurisdictions, this rule may also apply to entry upon public land having restricted access. A court may order payment of damages or an injunction to remedy the tort.
Arizona Proposition 207, a 2006 ballot initiative officially titled the Private Property Rights Protection Act, requires the government to reimburse land owners when regulations result in a decrease in the property's value, and also prevents government from exercising eminent domain on behalf of a private party. It was approved by a 64.8% margin. The land use portion of this proposition is similar to Oregon's 2004 Ballot Measure 37, and the eminent domain portion is similar to initiatives advanced in numerous states following the 2005 US Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
Mark Boslough is an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, research professor at University of New Mexico, fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and chair of the Asteroid Day Expert Panel. He is an expert in the study of planetary impacts and global catastrophes. Due to his work in this field, Asteroid 73520 Boslough was named in his honor.
An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a property right and type of incorporeal property in itself at common law in most jurisdictions.
The American Land Rights Association (ALRA) is a Wise Use organization based in Battle Ground, Washington. The group describes itself as "dedicated to the wise-use of our resources, access to our Federal lands and the protection of our private property rights."
Jill Annette Niederhauser Parrish is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Utah. She served as a justice of the Utah Supreme Court from 2003 to 2015.
General Land Office Easements were legal mechanisms which created right of way to ensure future access through, and to the interior of, lots or parcels created by the U.S. Small Tract Act of 1938,.
Bears Ears National Monument is a United States national monument located in San Juan County in southeastern Utah, established by President Barack Obama by presidential proclamation on December 28, 2016. The monument protects 1,351,849 acres of public land surrounding the Bears Ears—a pair of buttes—and the Indian Creek corridor rock climbing area. The Native American names for the buttes have the same meaning in each of the languages represented in the region. The names are listed in the presidential proclamation as "Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa [sic], Kwiyaghatʉ Nükavachi/Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe"—all four mean "Bears Ears".
A right of way is a transportation corridor along which people, animals, vehicles, watercraft, or utility lines travel, or the legal status that gives them the right to do so. Rights-of-way in the physical sense include controlled-access highways, railroads, canals, hiking paths, bridle paths for horses, bicycle paths, the routes taken by high-voltage lines, utility tunnels, or simply the paved or unpaved local roads used by different types of traffic. The term highway is often used in legal contexts in the sense of "main way" to mean any public-use road or any public-use road or path. Some are restricted as to mode of use.
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