Landlocked: Sheridan County’s inaccessible public land
Landlocked: Sheridan County’s inaccessible public land
By Tracee Davis
The Sheridan Press
Via Wyoming News Exchange
SHERIDAN – Outdoor recreation enthusiasts agree: Wyoming is an exceptional state in terms of public land that can be used for hunting, fishing, camping, touring, and exploring.
In fact, half of the land in the state is classified as public in some way because it falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management or State Trust Lands.
However, not all of that land is accessible because it is surrounded by property owned by private entities, and Sheridan County is no exception.
The situation of inaccessible public land unfolded via a series of well-meaning development transactions that began before statehood. Land initially taken from indigenous tribes or negotiated via treaties (many of which were later dishonored) established the Wyoming territory as federal land.
Later, the government divided the land into one-mile-square sections and gave every other square to the Union Pacific Railroad along its intended railway route, resulting in a checkerboard with public land intermingled with railroad land. Later, the 1862 Homestead Act awarded small parcels of land to settlers who were willing and able to hang a shingle on a plot for five years.
Back in those days, no one had public accessibility in the forefront of their planning and zoning, and the wilderness and prairies that later became Wyoming proper were dismissed as useless land that was literally given away.
The result was today’s patchwork land plan where, in many instances, public land is surrounded by private property along an established road, thus making it landlocked. Landowners are generally not interested in purchasing the land to extend their agricultural operations because they can get the same usage benefits by leasing the land without assuming the property tax burden. It also means they and their neighbors hold the keys by default.
Wyoming has one-third of all landlocked public land west of the Mississippi; just more than 3 million acres statewide, according to a 2019 study by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
Sheridan County Geographic Information Systems Coordinator Richard Immell said it’s difficult to say exactly how much landlocked public land exists in the county, but he was able to come up with a good faith estimate based on data available to him using criteria likely to yield a conservative result.
“The county assessor is generally only truly interested in what they collect taxes on,” he explained, adding the office has not always tracked exempt properties in the GIS. Though they do map it now, much of the property not subject to county taxes is still unmapped due to the previous policy.
To overcome this potential variant, he compared county records with those from the BLM to find all sections of public land. To determine whether each parcel was accessible, those that were within 500 feet of a public road were omitted.
From there, he took river data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is not maintained by the county, and eliminated land segments that do not touch a FEMA-recognized waterway. This was done because Wyoming law allows public access to waterways as long as it can be navigated by watercraft without touching bottom.
“The drawback there is you can’t be sure there is waterflow there all of the time. You may only have access when there’s water,” he said, adding that another wildcard exists in individual easements secured for some of the parcels.
“Up to that point, what I found was that there are approximately 221 parcels with 42,405 approximate acres that either don’t have river access or are not within 500 feet of a road,” Immell said. “The vast majority of that is BLM and a smaller portion being state land.”
The acreage described by Immell is a large scale approximation that equates to just more than 66 square miles of landlocked public land in Sheridan County, meaning potential recreationists would have to attain permission from landowners to pass through their private parcels to get to public sections.
The biggest chunk of public land in Sheridan County is U.S. Forest Service land, followed by BLM and then Wyoming State Trust Land. Access to the latter is the least traditional.
Assistant Director of Field Services for the Office of State Lands and Investments Ben Bump said state trust land wasn’t always open to the public. He said it wasn’t until the 1980s that the Board of Land Commissioners gave the public the privilege of access to State Trust Lands.
“The concept of State Trust Land is unique, and it’s very nuanced…I would offer the point that State Trust Land is not for public access. The point of that land is to create revenue by leasing out surface and subsurface rights,” Bump said, explaining that leases to ranchers and energy operators generate revenue for the state.
“If you think of it in a historical context, State Trust Lands were given to the state a long time ago. Today, the roads are different, and the picture of recreation is very different. From the perspective of purely recreation, where possible, we want the public to have that privilege,” he said, adding that 70% of State Trust Land around the state is accessible, which is a high percentage.
Natural resources are the backbone of state revenue, and developers with deep pockets are well-versed and protected in negotiating agreements with landowners for pass-through access.
An individual sportsman or nature enthusiast has a more daunting task when it comes to getting to those tucked-away parcels. Also, the responsibility to know whether they are trespassing falls squarely on the shoulders of individuals.
“To have an understanding in the differences about this land is something we want the public to have,” Bump said. “We always encourage recreationists to contact us in any number of ways to determine if there is access.”
For ownership and accessibility questions for Sheridan County land, the county assessor offers an interactive GIS map online.