This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: The Keys to Unlocking Eight Million Acres of Checkerboarded Public Land

Authors

Dalton Springer

Keywords

checkerboarded land, checkerboard, Western United States, Iron Bar Holding v. Cape, Iron Bar Holding, Iron Bar Holdings, 1862 Pacific Railway Act, Federal Land & Management Act of 1976, Bureau of Land Management, BLM

Abstract

The term “checkerboarded land” has become associated with alternating public and private square-mile lots in Western states such as Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. In the mid-19th century, the United States was in the throes of Manifest Destiny. President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1862 Pacific Railway Act which aimed to connect the eastern United States with the newly acquired western territories by developing the Transcontinental Railroad. As an incentive for building the rail line, the federal government granted the even-numbered one-square-mile sections of land to the railroad companies, while retaining the odd-numbered one-square-mile sections for itself. The Federal Land & Management Act of 1976 makes public land, specifically land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), accessible to the public for recreation. Of the 2.4 billion acres of land in the United States, the BLM manages over 240 million surface acres and roughly 60% is privately owned.

Recommended Citation

Dalton Springer, This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: The Keys to Unlocking Eight Million Acres of Checkerboarded Public Land, 78 Ark. L. Rev. (2025).
Available at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol78/iss1/5