Summary: In the West, it’s called “the checkerboard” – one square mile of public land (called a section) then one square mile of private – a direct result of frontier-era policies where the federal government gave away millions of acres of land, some to homesteaders but many to politically connected industries such as the railroads and timber companies. The result, in our modern U.S., is a tangle of ownership and, sometimes, an access and land management nightmare. The Crazy Mountains are one such landscap
