what the heck is a private road really?

[Goldwasher]

sooooo. if theres blm land with a road that acesses several properties and blm land, and theres no gate just a sign that says no trespassing private road no gate i can use that road to get to this blm land right..im not trespassing because im legally acessing my federal land right who do i talk to if im confronted by an irate homeowner if intercepted once headin down this road??

 

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[YEEP]

I live with my girlfiend.

Now that there is a funny statement...........

 

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[Goldwasher]

what does that even mean? yeep, thanks for the mature discussion everyone else...

 

[YEEP]

what does that even mean? yeep, thanks for the mature discussion everyone else...

Which one? A private road is just that PRIVATE. The funny statment is because I live with my girlfriend also and beleive it or not on 80 acres!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO what is it that you want to know

 

[Goldwasher]

ok semi funny when you have more info..... your profile says your female so does that make it funnier.... and your definition of a private road is way to simplified for the situatin im in and therfore your info is incorrect and useless to me........

 

[Caminochaos]

ok semi funny when you have more info..... your profile says your female so does that make it funnier.... and your definition of a private road is way to simplified for the situatin im in and therfore your info is incorrect and useless to me........

After calling around a bit, a private road may be used if there is an easement attached to it or it is a public use area. Otherwise you may only access the government land by county (or government) maintained roads. So unfortunatley in this situation pville we are screwed.

 

[Goldwasher]

yea i know still think blm that was accessable before there were private properties there should be considered "public use" people used to go out there theres a road......... guess considering the new spots we have it can go to the backburner im gonna look into easments and the age of those roads back there.

 

[mrs.oroblanco]

The BLM needs to smarten up a bit, and make sure there is access to the public properties BEFORE they buy them or take them over.

New Mexico has acres and acres of public land that you cannot get access to. There are private roads that people have put padlocks on.
One year, I got really ticked off about it, and contacted BLM to report it (I thought back then that they had to leave the road to the BLM land open. Surprise to me - they had never gotten the access rights, and we were screwed.

The BLM told me that was how they GOT some of the public land - it was landlocked and people could not legally sell it, so they "donate" it to the BLM or states, and they take it off their taxes.

Beth

 

[bigwater]

I thought this thread was about access to private property within BLM boundries. If so, I'll reiterate the facts.

BLM will attempt to purchase land within it's boundries, or exchange property on the edge of it's boundries for a current property owner's land inside the boundries. If BLM cannot acquire the land due to an owner's unwillingness to give up the land, then BLM is required to give the owner of the land an easement right to be able to ingress and egress their land. That right is granted to the property owner only. If there are two or three or more private islands within the BLM area that can be accessed from the same easement, then those owners, and those owners only have access to the easement. Not even BLM has the rights to use that land. BLM doesn't maintain the roads, nor do they pick up the brass from the firearms of the property owners who protect their easement.

 

[Goldwasher]

nope what im referring to is blm land that is basically "set back" if you will from the closest public access......,this setback used to be part of adjacent blm land that was transferred as alot of land around here has been for development.....there is a road that has connected that public rd wich goes through blm, private and county properties up to this point.....,then forks at the boundry of this new private old blm land and is making a sort of buffer...for cars because of this rd status...... actually theres contigous blm land i could walk very far and around and over a current claim and end up where this road goes.......i think because of this situation of previous public access, and age of this road...its on old maps.......there might be an easment or should be legally..... i wanna know basically what to ask at the county and at what office i ask it and and say if i do walk around and put up a monument...stake a claim......shouldnt i then have the right of access?

 

[bigwater]

I feel like we're starting to tilt at windmills here. The reality is that if there is a private easement and the person who owns that easement doesn't want you on it, you're tresspassing by using it. You can walk 1mm off the easment while staying on BLM land and be 100% legal. If ATVs are legal on the particular BLM land, you can drive the ATV 1mm off of the private road, and the owner of the easment has no right to disallow you to do so.

I use 1mm as a reference because it's a quantifiable unit of measurement that is about as small as it gets when you're walking around or riding on an ATV, but the fact is that the easement is granted to a person for the sole purpose to allow ingress and egress to his property. Whether the laws are screwed up regarding the ability of other citizens to use these easement areas isn't really a topic of discussion here. The easment is granted to an individual property owner. The individual property owner has the responsibility to develop and maintain the easement to his own satisfaction, and is fully allowed under law to deny you access to it. A fire truck responding to a forest fire isn't even allowed to use that road unless you, as the holder of the easment, gives it permission to use it. The fire jumpers can cut their own road 1mm off of your easment if they want to though.

Call it messed up laws. Whatever, but that's the way it works.

 

[Goldwasher]

how can i be off topic in my own topic as mentioned before prople have put up signs unlawfully to block access on a rightof way that is public im still researching this certain rd, i know what road it is and have never said it was actually private just that someone else said it is. if it is unlawfully blocked or if the guy has the only legal right of way its on paper somewhere and im just trying to find someone that knows name of that paper letter state law county law that would make this easment or lack of it available info........ i ask you does everyone here really only use the info thats easy to get? if theres a law or office that enforces thes laws theres paper that backs it up what else would you use in court?if i already had the claim and blm sold the land creating this right of way that i was denied and some new owner got that access and i brought up here people would be all over it .im trying to make sure this lack of access is not unlawfull to me and other land users...for the record i have never gone down this road or intend to tresspass i dont need to be told i would be tresspassing or about owners cleaning up there brass..etc.....this info and research could be very benificial to others here... i also never said the laws were messed up just the situation mainly do to there being no clear answer...by the way ive accessed other blm land that was locked up like this no problem didnt know i crossed private land til later...i realize maybe there was an easment or the owner doesnt care either way same situation different outcome so far im just sorting it out.

 

[bigwater]

Well I think it was me that suggested that the law was messed up, so don't take offense at my statement. I understand your desire that the rules were different, but unfortunately they are not.

BLM doesn't sell land within their boundries (at least not yet), so that is not a question in this issue. What they attempt to do is obtain all the land within their boundries. Fortunately the law won't allow them to use eminate domain to just sieze it, so they attempt to negotiate with the land owners to take control of the land. This may include trading for land on the edge of the BLM "bubble", thereby making the BLM property the same size, and at the same time excluding private property in the middle of it, or it may include the outright purchase of the land from the property owner which increases the size of the bubble while still excluding private property in the middle of it.

There's nothing that says that these property owners have to give up their land (yet), however the law does mandate that the property owner be given easement rights to be able to ingress and egress their private property. Nobody else has the rights to use that property other than the landowner(s) that use it to access their property.

I only assume that the law is written this way because the landowners are 100% responsible for maintaining the private easement, and the BLM charges you a one time fee to obtain the easement. BLM doesn't come in and pave a road to your property. They just say, OK, here's a 10' wide swatch of land that you and only you are allowed to use so you can get to your property from the nearest public road. You have to take down trees, grade it, gravel or pave it at your own expense, and it is in the purest form a private road.

I own 6.5 acres two miles inside BLM controlled national forest, and I'm sort of familiar with this topic from the numerous conversations I've had with BLM over the years. I'm not an ass that tells people that they can't use my driveway to access areas of the forest beyond my house, but I can easily see how I would get annoyed if my carport became a parking lot for trailers full of ATV's. I don't have a fence or a no trespassing sign on my place, but I'm fully entitled to put one up if it were to become a problem.

 

[greydigger]

If a No Tresspassing sign is posted that does not give anyone the right to shoot someone legally.
If it is valid, they may be able to do a "Citizens Arrest" and remand you as soon as possible to "The Proper Authorities" if you
do not leave when asked to. Or call a LEO and complain and have them deal with it. (Best way.)
Who says it's "Private Property" ? The poster of the sign. Can he prove that?
The enforcing body must have a reasonable cause to arrest anyone.

Now the Prospecting part I am not sure of but may be a valid point if you have a claim there.
US Congress passed laws in 1872 to help prospectors.

Just a thought.

Grey

 

[bigwater]

LOL, well I guess the "picking up the brass" comment was a little extreme. But yeah, you can legally shoot somebody where I live if you feel that you are threatened in any way. If somebody is trespassing on your property, and you feel that you are being threatened, the cops will count the brass in the yard and report the count to the judge and jury so they can make a decision. If it's clearly on your property where the altercation takes place, you got an almost perfect chance of coming through it with no charges whatsoever. You better make sure they're on your property though. If they're standing an inch over into BLM land and pull a gun on you, and you shoot first... you better drag their ass over on your property and clean up the blood spill outside your property lines, otherwise you have a criminal dispute on your hands that can turn into a manslaughter charge.

 

[Goldwasher]

oh my lordy, lordy, lordy, the shootout talks again.....so we split hairs with bullets ....i carry on federal land because i am absolutelly allowed to right....?? so my first round is snake shot the other four are .38spcl +P..............if i feel threatened by you you most likely wont know im there...sorta like the other potentially hazardous creatures in the woods...so many hypathetical situations right? now were off topic......i used to live on a twenty seven acre private in holding, 100%blm surrounded in Inyo county there was a gate and fence legally at the property line.anyone could drive up to the gate park hike walk around climb a hill and watch us with binoculars if they wanted, many many many time l.a. flatlanders on atv in minivans dwp workers thinkin they owned the place went past the gate if i pulled a gun on anyone of them and they felt threatened the a deputy would come pay a visit and give me a talkin too it only took one time to educate me...... the term threatened can be greatly analyzed, theres also laws concerning brandishing firearms...so like mentioned in previous posts sometimes there are easements attached to roads leading to properties and im working on finding out if ths road has one...oh yea blm does absolutely sale off and used to let you patent land that is how hundreds/thousands of acres have ended up in developers hands chhheeeeeeaaaaapppppp in the west and it has created all kinds of land use road use and access issues and that is what we are discussing here....

 

[bigwater]

Wow. I wonder why the BLM activities are so different in the south west than they are in the south east? You couldn't buy a square inch of BLM land here if you had a fifty pound sack of hundred dollar bills to offer. In fact, BLM routinely tries to get land owners to give up their land inside current BLM boundries here. In the ten years I've lived here, I've been contacted no less than 15 times by BLM with reasonably generous offers if I'd sell my property to them and get out. Maybe they know something we don't. When I say reasonably generous, land goes for around $10,000 per acre at the moment, and they'll offer $15,000. That would be a heck of a deal, except they don't care about the house that's sitting on the property and won't pay a cent for it. It'd cost me way more to replace the house than the 32 grand I'd profit on the land.

I guess I should just bow out of this thread, as it sounds like your situation is a lot more convoluted than it would ever be in my neck of the woods. Everything that I've said up to this point is a statement of fact for my area, but evidently not for yours, so I'll just leave it up to somebody who knows your stomping grounds to help you get the answers you need.

 

[Goldwasher]

dont bow out bigwater your info is factual and i appreciate it... and i guess thats the kicker with this issue and a few others talked about on tnet is the lack of consistancy with the bureaucracies destroying our sanity. and there ability to do what they were created for.... to manage the use of whatever they oversee by the citizens of this nation not tie up its use......so many things involving the gov. these days are absurd its maddening.i would venture to guess anything blm back east is very money driven and is benifitting some old money in some way.

 

[bigwater]

Well I've carefully re-read through this thread and picked up on the subtle concept that you may be trying to access a spot where you want to, or already have staked a claim. You're completely right in that the bueracracy is maddening, because you can't stake a claim on BLM land around here, in fact, they recently enacted legislation that even forbids panning in streams that are bordered by BLM land. Even though the streams will heal themselves, you aren't allowed to even pan in them, much less dredging or sluicing. Thank goodness there are still islands of private land around for us to prospect on.

I wish I could help you on your access issues. But the more I think about my position vs. yours, the more my head spins. It's a lot more straight forward here in the national forest. The rules are pretty much you can't do anything unless you have a piece of paper that says you can. Good luck getting a new piece of paper now around here. They're worth more for their historical value than they are for access rights.

 

[NHBandit]

Call me simple but assuming the access road is on private property what about simply asking the property owner for permission to use his road ? It might be a bit easier than calling every federal, state & local agency within 200 miles and getting 200 different answers to the same question.... Or taking advice from the fine membership here.. Try telling the cops that "Billly Bob" from Treasure net said it was ok... Have you even tried to TALK to the owner of the posted road ?

 

[Goldwasher]

wow, it never ceases to amaze me how people dont read the whole thread.... hey guys i do appreciate your advice and experiences. however i do not appreciate being talked down to or treated as being stupid.......this road crosses several properties or is very close to crossing them, and i know for a fact that people do unlawfully block access with out knowing it, thats why im trying to figure out what paperwork to get to have in hand when im approached by an unknowing property owner.on top of that if the easment was granted to property owners i would have to ask all of them the chance they all would agree is slim. and ive never gone past the posted signs i dont live in an area where you just go knock on someones door and i would have to drive down this road and if i am legally barred from using it i want to respect that owners wishes. if i knew who the owner was i would ask, and several properties arent developed they are owned by someone who doesnt even live in this county. so thanks all you "Billy Bobs"( as i am one of you) i do truely want to here what you have to say. to the previous non "Billy Bob" poster your a jerk....this obvioussly is non "Billy Bob" business , sooooo mind your own.