The legality of corner-crossing in Montana is still an open question, and the Environmental Quality Council’s mandate to draft legislation for the 2027 session may be the closest thing to an answer landowners and recreationist are going to get. The Montana Environmental Quality Council (EQC) will consider the current legal status of “corner-crossing” at its May 12–13, 2026, meeting in Helena, where Lieutenant Governor, and former property law professor at the University of Montana School of Law, Kristen Juras is scheduled to address the council on the morning of May 13.[1] The meeting follows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s landmark ruling in Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape, which held that stepping from one parcel of federal public land to another at a shared corner is not actionable trespass under federal law and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent denial of certiorari.[2]
Background
Corner-crossing arises from 19th-century federal land policy. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 granted railroads alternating sections of land on either side of proposed rail lines, creating a checkerboard pattern across the West. The Homestead Act of 1862 and subsequent state enabling acts transferred millions of additional acres to private and state ownership, often surrounding federal public land on all sides. The result: approximately 15.87 million acres of federal and state public land are effectively inaccessible because they are landlocked by private land, with roughly 8.3 million of those acres reachable only via corner-crossing. (OnX Maps & Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Off Limits, But Within Reach (2018); OnX Maps & Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Inaccessible State Lands in the West (2019); OnX Maps, The Corner-Locked Report (2022)).
The Iron Bar Decision
In 2020, four Wyoming hunters crossed between two federal public land parcels at a shared corner, never touching the surface of Iron Bar Holdings, LLC’s adjoining private land. Iron Bar sued for civil trespass; the Carbon County Attorney filed criminal charges. The hunters prevailed in both proceedings, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed that the Unlawful Inclosures Act of 1885 (UIA), 43 U.S.C. §§ 1061–66, preempts state trespass law in the checkerboard context. The UIA prohibits any barrier, including a legal barrier enforced through a trespass action, that completely encloses public lands and prevents lawful access. Because Iron Bar’s land surrounded the public sections, enforcing trespass claims would create the precise unlawful inclosure Congress sought to prohibit.
The court rejected Iron Bar’s Takings Clause argument, concluding that the right to exclude corner-crossers was one Iron Bar “never had.” The UIA is a pre-existing restriction on property rights in the checkerboard context, not a compensable taking. The ruling is narrow: corner-crossers must step at the actual corner point without touching private land surfaces, must not cause property damage, and must comply with all other applicable laws. The decision controls in Tenth Circuit states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma, and does not directly reach Montana.
What the EQC Meeting Means for Montana
Montana is in the Ninth Circuit, where Iron Bar is persuasive but not controlling. Several factors suggest it would carry significant weight in any Ninth Circuit test case: the ruling rests on the supremacy of federal law over conflicting state law, a principle that does not vary by circuit; the UIA should arguably apply uniformly across all federal lands; and the Tenth Circuit relied on both Eighth and Ninth Circuit precedents as well as four binding Supreme Court decisions. Near term, local law enforcement and county prosecutors remain the first decision-makers in any Montana corner-crossing dispute, and awareness of Iron Bar may informally shape enforcement decisions before the legislature acts.
The EQC is charged with developing corner-crossing legislation for the 2027 Montana legislative session, and its deliberations may produce Montana-specific guidance on scenarios the Tenth Circuit left unresolved, including corner-crossing from federal land to state land, liability standards and access management rules.
What Clients Should Do Now
Large Montana landowners with checkerboard-pattern holdings should consider assessing the extent to which public lands adjoin their property at shared corners and evaluate existing access control measures in light of the UIA preemption analysis. Attempts to enforce state trespass law against corner-crossers carry federal preemption risk under Iron Bar if challenged, and that risk will only grow as the EQC process advances. Landowners with concerns about liability, property damage or unauthorized access should consult counsel now, before the 2027 Montana legislative session.
Hunters, outfitters and recreationists seeking access to landlocked public land should understand that Iron Bar is not law in Ninth Circuit which encompasses Montana.
[1] Montana Environmental Quality Council, Meeting Notice, May 12–13, 2026, Capitol Room 317 & Zoom, available at EQC | Committee Explorer (last visited May 8, 2026).
[2]Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape, 674 F. Supp. 3d 1059 (D. Wyo. 2023), aff’d, 131 F.4th 1153 (10th Cir. 2025), cert. denied, 146 S. Ct. 327 (2025).
