AI-generated representative image showing a steep rocky slope above a riverside meadow in Wyoming; the inset highlights a narrow trail descending the hillside. Credits – Gemini
After the 2021 sale, he rented a cabin from Jackson and put a corral on the meadow, relocated six horses there and still used the same road to feed them. He also had not proved that he could not build on the 2.64 acres or continue using the game trail for fishing and other family activities. The constitutional exception for private ways of necessity and the state’s private road law have been explained by the Wyoming Supreme Court in earlier cases, including a 2007 ruling that traces the law back to 1895 and says damages are measured by comparing a property’s value before and after the road. That ruling notes that the original statute was amended in 2000, and the current procedure is set out in Wyoming Statute § 24-9-101.
That, the court said, was not the sort of necessity the law contemplates. A neighbour testified that he had never seen a way to the meadow, only a short track round the pump, and Jackson said she had assumed the track was for the well. Tilden testified that he retained the land so he could reach a favourite fishing spot. Before he divided up the property, he and his family had walked across what became Jackson’s land via a two-track road to the lower terrain to fish, skate on the ice, ride horses or walk the dogs. Tilden could not pass the test. He admitted that the county road passed across his land and that he had a legal interest in the same, and he did not contend that the road in itself was very inconvenient. The actual grievance was that a natural barrier on his own property separated him from the lower level. The statute is meant to prevent landlocking, it stated, not to make a property easier to use or more valuable to sell. The trial judge looked at aerial images taken shortly after the separation and found no obvious trail from the county road over Jackson’s land to the meadow. The photos showed only a short loop around the well pump. The Supreme Court noted that it was more than ten years after the division of the property that Tilden first thought of building a cottage and corral below the drop. For owners whose land really has no legal way out, Wyoming does offer a remedy. The constitutional wording it quotes also requires just compensation for any such taking.
Wyoming’s top court answered that question in 2025. On May 23, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled against Samuel Tilden, who wanted a private road across his neighbour Linda Jackson’s land to reach a level meadow beside the South Fork of the Shoshone River, below a hillside with a 60-foot drop, or about 18 metres. Because a county road already ran through it, and that a steep slope on his own property was not the kind of problem the statute is meant to remedy, they said his land was not landlocked.
The judges upheld two earlier Park County district court rulings.
The other side of the coin is the Tilden case. A cliff, a game trail and a pleasant memory of fishing were not enough to compel a neighbour to give up a piece of her land. The court made it plain that the law protects those whose property would otherwise be useless and that seeking a better route to part of one’s own land is something else. Owners who want to develop in hard-to-reach corners of their property should check their access before they buy and ask for it in writing before they sell.