Public Bridge on public road, Private Property?

[+BirdDogBob]

Just had someone complain about my cache being on their private property. The cache has been there for 5 years. It is attached to a public bridge on a public road. Can this be on private property? 

[Keystone]

The answer depends on how the ownership of the highway works under applicable local law, and the easement agreements which may be in place.   A landowner may grant an easement for a road to pass through their land, or for utilities along the road.  The permitted uses of the easement are spelled out in the legal documentation.  In my experience, most easements do not mention "placing and seeking geocache containers" as a permitted purpose for the easement.

[+MNTA]

Your best. bet is to archive. Once your reviewer reads that he will do the same. Appeals to GS will probably fail as well. 

 

Had a landowner yell at me for a cache on what she claimed was her property. The CO complained that it was on park property adjacent to her property, which she clearly claimed. I filed the NA, reviewer archived and the COs appealed but the area is now permanently off the board. Community relations are more important than a cache is what I learned from this. 

 

A lot of rural landowners do not appreciate the pullouts people create killing foliage etc again those pull outs are on their private property. Most of the time the cars are not fully off the road either.

 

Best bet archive the cache and apologize to the land owner and offer to retrieve the cache. Had he emailed GS directly it would have been archived already.

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, MNTA said:

Had a landowner yell at me for a cache on what she claimed was her property. The CO complained that it was on park property adjacent to her property, which she clearly claimed. I filed the NA, reviewer archived and the COs appealed but the area is now permanently off the board. Community relations are more important than a cache is what I learned from this. 

 

A few years back I was in a section of Brisbane Water National Park sussing out some waterfalls to use as virtual waypoints in a multi. I emerged onto the service road just as a woman in a large 4WD, with two man-eating dogs in the back baying for my blood, pulled up and accused me of tresspassing on her land. I told her I thought I was in the national park and asked where her property boundary was. She pointed to the bridge about 50 metres along the road, where a home-made "No Entry Private Property" sign was nailed to a tree. I told her I wasn't going across the bridge and that pacified her enough for me to escape uneaten by her dogs. The maps I had showed the bridge wasn't anywhere near her property boundary, which was several kilometres further along the road, so I asked at the National Parks office and they confirmed that it was all national park and I was perfectly entitled to be in there. They pretty much said she was a bit of a nutter so, not wanting cachers doing my multi to be confronted by her or her dogs, I decided to abandon the cache.

 

I want my caches to be fun and being confronted by nutters with big dogs isn't much fun, even if you know you're in the right.

[+lee737]

6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I want my caches to be fun and being confronted by nutters with big dogs isn't much fun, even if you know you're in the right.

Good call.

 

[+lee737]

It's sort of weird how possessive some get.... we parked on the median strip between a letterbox and the roadway to find a cache, found it and went back to the car. As we were about to drive off, a young guy approached from the nearby house - I assumed it might have even been the CO, wound down the window..... 'you're parked on my yard!' we got - I explained we were on the footpath... 'you parked on my yard!' is all we got..... I mean if we started digging with an excavator or dumping rubbish, fair enough.... but some dude and a child parked there for 5 minutes.... why bother? Even if it was your property? I just closed the window and drove off mid next sentence.....

[+JL_HSTRE]

12 hours ago, Keystone said:

The answer depends on how the ownership of the highway works under applicable local law, and the easement agreements which may be in place.

 

Partly it depends whether the road is an easement across private propety or actually owned by the municipality, county, or state.

 

Right-of-way width can also vary quite a bit from road to road.

Edited May 18, 2022 by JL_HSTRE

[+MNTA]

GS is not going to take the time or effort to figure it out. Complaints will always  yield to the assumed land owner, even if they are not the correct person.

[+mustakorppi]

1 hour ago, MNTA said:

GS is not going to take the time or effort to figure it out. Complaints will always  yield to the assumed land owner, even if they are not the correct person.

And even in jurisdictions where merely being a land owner is not a legal reason to stop people from finding and hiding geocaches there.

[+cerberus1]

18 hours ago, BirdDogBob said:

Just had someone complain about my cache being on their private property. The cache has been there for 5 years. It is attached to a public bridge on a public road. Can this be on private property? 

 

What were you told when you asked for permission? 

[+niraD]

12 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

The maps I had showed the bridge wasn't anywhere near her property boundary, which was several kilometres further along the road, so I asked at the National Parks office and they confirmed that it was all national park and I was perfectly entitled to be in there. They pretty much said she was a bit of a nutter so, not wanting cachers doing my multi to be confronted by her or her dogs, I decided to abandon the cache.

I've seen caches in suburban parks archived over conflicts with irate residents. One was in a public greenbelt located behind the back yards of the last row of houses in the neighborhood. It was accessed by paths placed between pairs of houses, connecting the sidewalk along the street with the multi-use path that went along the greenbelt. The conflict wasn't even over the use of the path next to the resident's home, but over geocachers parking in "her parking space". Never mind that they were parking on the street, which is first-come, first-served parking not owned by anyone.

[+cerberus1]

14 hours ago, MNTA said:

A lot of rural landowners do not appreciate the pullouts people create killing foliage etc again those pull outs are on their private property. Most of the time the cars are not fully off the road either.

Best bet archive the cache and apologize to the land owner and offer to retrieve the cache. Had he emailed GS directly it would have been archived already.

 

Yep.  All ends of our properties are bordered by roads or other's properties... 

Some are road "right of way" that's only for utilities and road crews. 

 - We've found on most roadside hides it was obvious the CO didn't ask permission. 

Others are "right of way" for future use, to keep from being landlocked.  We pay taxes on the entire property.  None are "open to the public"...

[+lee737]

It never ceases to amaze me how the CO's who drop massive country road power trails put caches right out the front of houses when there are literally kilometre after kilometre of vacant scrub in between..... a handful less caches in your 65 cache power trail won't be noticed.

[+ras_oscar]

In some states the property line actually runs down the center of the paved road. My uncle owned a home in NH that was like that. There was a 40 foot easement for a 24' road but the property was owned by the home owners. I believe the easement for a road is dedicated to "public access" which means you have the right to travel on the road. Not sure what happens when you park your car and get out, perhaps someone with more legal experience than I will chime in.

 

I believe that many landowners take virtual possession of whatever they can see from their front door. If I saw cars repeatedly parking in front of my house and people getting out for a purpose I could not understand I would likely become concerned, even though on street parking does not belong to me.

 

I was in Texas at GZ and walked into what appeared to be a homeless tent city. There were several fences surrounding what appeared to be a detention basin. I was pondering whether or not to abort my search when a homeowner leaned over the fence and told me I was trespassing on private property. Since he was leaning ON HIS FENCE i'm fairly certain i was not trespassing on HIS property, but I elected to apologize, turn and leave.   I spotted the cache on the way out, and got the smiley anyway.

Edited June 9, 2022 by ras_oscar

[+captnemo]

"In some states the property line actually runs down the center of the paved road. My uncle owned a home in NH that was like that. There was a 40 foot easement for a 24' road but the property was owned by the home owners."

 

The North side of my property ends in the middle of a paved, 55MPH road.  I own to the middle of the road but the county has an easement for the road.  This of course means that if you park on the South side of the road you are on private property.  I don't care if you do as I have two caches on my property.

[+Mn-treker]

Most people do not understand easement law. On top of that It may vary in places. I live in a township with township road in front of my property. Here a county road easement is public but a township road may or may  not have public easement along the side of the road. I own the land in the ditch on both sides of the road as well as the land the road is on. The township owns an easement for the road and utilities. Snowmobiles may drive in an easement along a county road but not always a Township road. So you can guess what people can do? Walk the road but in the ditch is questionable.

So when in farm country the farmer controls access in the ditch and at times harvest the grass growing in the ditch. Farm property is automatically off limits to trespass, no signs needed to warn you to stay off, this is federal law. Farmer may detain you and place you under arrest. No hope for you. It is always a good idea to check your local laws and  not assume that you can do something. Some land owners are cool and some are not. They will come at you with a vengeance and a shotgun. There are also those who will falsely claim they own the land. If they do not they comit a criminal act. But get a cop on scene to deal with them would be slow. Gather evidence (pictures) and report them. Hopefully they get dealt with. But beware you just might be the trespasser. I am in a marsh you say, that is public you say. Then you get hauled off by the cops for trespass. Because you went right by the no trespassing signs with an attitude that marshes are public. I personally placed someone under arrest for that years ago. It pays to know your stuff

[+barefootjeff]

45 minutes ago, Mn-treker said:

There are also those who will falsely claim they own the land. If they do not they comit a criminal act. But get a cop on scene to deal with them would be slow. Gather evidence (pictures) and report them. Hopefully they get dealt with. But beware you just might be the trespasser. I am in a marsh you say, that is public you say. Then you get hauled off by the cops for trespass. Because you went right by the no trespassing signs with an attitude that marshes are public. I personally placed someone under arrest for that years ago. It pays to know your stuff

 

This was the sign I walked past a couple of hundred metres before I was accosted by the woman who claimed I was tresspassing on her land.

 

 

The park ranger I spoke to afterwards also thought the national park was public land, but I guess that woman knows her stuff better than they do. At any rate, the last time I checked, her home-made "No entry private property!" sign is still there nailed to a tree some 1500 metres before her actual property boundary.

[+Goldenwattle]

3 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

This was the sign I walked past a couple of hundred metres before I was accosted by the woman who claimed I was tresspassing on her land.

 

 

The park ranger I spoke to afterwards also thought the national park was public land, but I guess that woman knows her stuff better than they do. At any rate, the last time I checked, her home-made "No entry private property!" sign is still there nailed to a tree some 1500 metres before her actual property boundary.

That looks like public land to me. If she has put up a private sign on public land it can be removed. I reported a private sign once and had it removed by authorities.

A group of three of us were caching on a closed NSW rail line. The farmer turned up to accuse us of trespassing on private land. We weren't; it was rail property.

"Ah," I said, "Can you please tell me when the Act of Parliament was passed to close this line and so allow it to be sold to you? Otherwise it can't be sold to you and you don't own it."

"I almost own it," was the reply.

 

LOL!

 

Then you get really friendly farmers who just want a chat. I was driving along a dirt road opening and closing gates, as you do, (or are meant to do) and had stopped near a farm entrance and logged a cache. The farm had a sign , private property (on their private land which is okay), but still the farmer turned up, first to ask if I was okay, but then to have 'natter'. None of this is private property rubbish about the public road. I did check with him it was a private road. "Oh yes, it is. Just close the gates after you." Not all farmers are nasty!

Edited June 16, 2022 by Goldenwattle

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 6/9/2022 at 8:06 AM, ras_oscar said:

There were several fences surrounding what appeared to be a detention basin. I was pondering whether or not to abort my search when a homeowner leaned over the fence and told me I was trespassing on private property.

 

Water detention areas in neighborhoods are often owned by the neighborhood HOA, not the local government. 

[+colleda]

On 6/16/2022 at 6:18 PM, Goldenwattle said:

That looks like public land to me. If she has put up a private sign on public land it can be removed. I reported a private sign once and had it removed by authorities.

A group of three of us were caching on a closed NSW rail line. The farmer turned up to accuse us of trespassing on private land. We weren't; it was rail property.

"Ah," I said, "Can you please tell me when the Act of Parliament was passed to close this line and so allow it to be sold to you? Otherwise it can't be sold to you and you don't own it."

"I almost own it," was the reply.

 

LOL!

 

Then you get really friendly farmers who just want a chat. I was driving along a dirt road opening and closing gates, as you do, (or are meant to do) and had stopped near a farm entrance and logged a cache. The farm had a sign , private property (on their private land which is okay), but still the farmer turned up, first to ask if I was okay, but then to have 'natter'. None of this is private property rubbish about the public road. I did check with him it was a private road. "Oh yes, it is. Just close the gates after you." Not all farmers are nasty!

The rule is to leave the gates as you found them - just to clarify.

[+Goldenwattle]

10 hours ago, colleda said:

The rule is to leave the gates as you found them - just to clarify.

Yes that's the rule. It's just that ALL the gates on that road were closed, necessitating me to open and close them.

[+colleda]

23 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

Yes that's the rule. It's just that ALL the gates on that road were closed, necessitating me to open and close them.

That's what I understood from your post.