Wyoming’s Corner-Crossing Bill Dies in Senate as Montana Eyes 2027

Wyoming’s effort to codify corner crossing into state statute is dead. Montana’s parallel push won’t reach the legislature until 2027 at the earliest. Together, the two states show how far the West remains from resolving a question that directly determines where anglers and hunters can legally go.

Corner crossing refers to stepping from one parcel of public land to another at the single point where two public parcels meet diagonally—without physically touching the private land that fills the other two corners of that intersection. The practice is the only way to reach millions of acres of federal and state ground in the West, where a 19th-century railroad land-grant system left public and private land interlocked in a checkerboard pattern. Landowners have argued that crossing at a shared corner constitutes trespass through their airspace; public land advocates counter that no private ground is touched and no damage is done. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit sided with the advocates, and when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a landowner’s appeal in October 2025, the ruling became settled law in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico—but left Montana and other states outside the 10th Circuit in legal limbo.

Wyoming’s House Bill 19, which would have written the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ corner-crossing ruling into state statute and unlocked some 2.4 million corner-locked acres for public access, passed the House 47-15 in February before collapsing on the Senate floor in a 27-4 vote earlier this month. The bill’s collapse came not from outright opposition to corner crossing—the 10th Circuit settled that question in Wyoming and five other states—but from a cascade of competing amendments that made the legislation unworkable. Disputes over whether state trust lands should be included, how an unmarked corner should be legally defined, and who bears responsibility for knowing a crossing point is valid turned an 85-word bill into a procedural tangle. Sen. Bill Landen, who had shepherded the measure through committee, acknowledged what the vote meant. “If this bill goes quietly to rest this evening,” he said, “I wish whoever well who’s going to take this up in the future, because it’s not going away.”

The practical upshot for Wyoming anglers and hunters is unchanged but clarified: corner crossing remains legal under federal case law, but without a state statute to back it up, law enforcement still lacks a simple answer when a complaint comes in. The 10th Circuit decision was a win. A statute would have been clarity. Wyoming doesn’t have it.

Montana never had either. Because the state sits in the 9th Circuit rather than the 10th, the federal ruling doesn’t apply there at all, and corner crossing remains officially unlawful under state guidance from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. As MidCurrent reported last month, roughly 871,000 acres of Montana public land are corner-locked—parcels that can only be reached at the point where two checkerboard sections of public ground meet, surrounded on all sides by private holdings. Montana’s legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years, so any bill must wait for the 2027 session.

That hasn’t stopped Sen. Ellie Boldman of Missoula and Rep. Josh Seckinger of Bozeman—co-chairs of the Montana Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus—from laying the groundwork. In mid-February the two announced their intent to pursue legislation—targeting the 2027 session or a potential interim committee action—arguing in a Bozeman Daily Chronicle op-ed that the bill would “do one simple thing. It clarifies in Montana law that corner crossing—when no private land is touched and no property is damaged—is lawful.” Seckinger, a fly fishing guide, has framed the stakes in terms his clients understand directly: access determines opportunity, he wrote, opportunity determines participation, and participation funds conservation. A Montana Free Press/Eagleton poll released March 5 found public opinion firmly on their side—roughly 60 percent of Montanans favor legalization, with support holding across party lines: 65 percent of independents, 63 percent of Democrats, and 53 percent of Republicans. A similar bill failed in the Montana House in 2013 after drawing busloads of blaze-orange-clad sportsmen to the Capitol.

Wyoming’s Senate vote is instructive for what Montana faces in 2027. Wyoming had the 10th Circuit ruling on its side, bipartisan support, and a bill that most lawmakers agreed simply reflected existing law—and still couldn’t survive the amendment process. Montana has strong public support and a guide-turned-legislator primed to carry the bill, but no favorable federal precedent and at least nine months before the legislature even convenes. Both efforts circle the same fault line: a checkerboard land ownership pattern dating to 19th-century railroad grants that, absent legislative clarity, leaves the question of who can reach which public land to county attorneys, wardens, and individual risk tolerance.

For the 2026 season, the situations differ but the practical guidance is similar. In Wyoming, corner crossing is legal—the 10th Circuit said so—but without a statute, some county attorneys and wardens still treat it as contested ground. In Montana it remains officially unlawful under FWP guidance, with no prosecution having reached trial in recent memory. In both states, anglers and hunters who choose to cross at checkerboard corners do so at their own risk.