Checkerboarding (land)

Checkerboarding refers to a situation where land ownership is intermingled between two or more owners, resulting in a checkerboard pattern. Checkerboarding is prevalent in the Western United States due to its extensive use in railroad grants for western expansion, although it had its beginnings in the canal land grant era.

Checkerboarding in the West occurred due to railroad land grants where railroads would be granted every other section along a rail corridor. These grants, which typically extended 6 to 40 miles (10 to 64 km) from either side of the track, were a subsidy to the railroads. Unlike per-mile subsidies which encouraged fast but shoddy track-laying, land grants encouraged higher quality work, since the railroads could increase the value of the land by building better track. The government also benefited from the increased value of the remaining public parcels.

Railroad land grants split the land surrounding the area where train tracks were to be laid into a checkerboard pattern. The land was already divided into 640-acre numbered sections according to the Public Land Survey System; odd-numbered plots were given to private railroad companies and the federal government kept even-numbered plots.

The federal government believed that because the value of land surrounding railroads would increase as much as twofold, granting land to private railroad companies would theoretically pay for itself and also increase the transportation infrastructure throughout the nation. Much to its own misfortune, the US government was not able to sell much of the land that it retained after checkerboarding because settlers willing to move West were not wealthy. The wealthiest United States citizens of the 19th century remained in the East. The federal government would eventually give away much of this land through the Homestead Act.

The first grants were given to the Mobile and Ohio and Illinois Central Railroads in 1850. Additional grants were made under the Pacific Railway Acts between 1862 and 1871, when they were stopped due to public opposition. In total, 79 grants were made, totaling 200,000,000 acres (810,000 km²), later reduced to 131,000,000 acres (530,000 km²).

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