Checkerboarding refers to a situation where land ownership is intermingled between two or more owners, resulting in a checkerboard

Checkerboard

A checkerboard or chequerboard is a board of chequered pattern on which English draughts is played. It is an 8×8 board and the 64 squares are of alternating dark and light color, often red and black....

 pattern. Checkerboarding is prevalent in the Western United States

Western United States

.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...

 due to its extensive use in railroad grants for western expansion, although it had its beginnings in the canal land grant era.

Railroad grants

Checkerboarding in the West occurred due to railroad land grants where railroads would be granted every other section

Section (United States land surveying)

In U.S. land surveying under the Public Land Survey System , a section is an area nominally one square mile, containing , with 36 sections making up one survey township on a rectangular grid....

 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

Subsidy

A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor A subsidy (also...

 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. Each block of land (640 acres) was then numbered; odd-numbered plots were given to private railroad companies and the federal government kept even-numbered plots.

The federal government believed that the value of land surrounding railroads would increase as much as twofold. Therefore 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 U.S. government

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

 was not able to sell much of the land that it retained after checkerboarding. This was 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

Homestead Act

A homestead act is one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River....

.

The first grants were given to the Mobile and Ohio

Mobile and Ohio Railroad

The Mobile and Ohio Railroad was a railroad in the Southern U.S. The M&O was chartered in January and February 1848 by the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It was planned to span the distance between the seaport of Mobile, Alabama and the Ohio River near Cairo, Illinois...

 and Illinois Central

Illinois Central Railroad

The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois with New Orleans, Louisiana and Birmingham, Alabama. A line also connected Chicago with Sioux City, Iowa...

 Railroads in 1850. Additional grants were made under the Pacific Railway Acts

Pacific Railway Acts

The Pacific Railroad Acts were a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 was the original act...

 between 1862 and 1871, when they were stopped due to public opposition. In total, 79 grants were made, totaling 200000000 acres (809,372 km²), later reduced to 131000000 acres (530,138.7 km²).

Native Americans

Checkerboarding also occurred due to Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 land grants, where native land was intermingled with non-native land. Many Native American tribes oppose checkerboarding, because it broke up traditionally communal native settlements into many individual plots, and allowed non-natives to claim land within those settlements.

The Dawes Act

Dawes Act

The Dawes Act, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the land into allotments for individual Indians. The Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again...

 of 1887 created most Native American checkerboarding. The act was intended to bolster self-sufficiency giving each individual between 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) and 160 acres (647,497.6 m²).

Problems

Checkerboarding can create problems for access and ecological management. It is one of the major causes of inholding

Inholding

An inholding is privately owned land inside the boundary of a national park, national forest, state park, or similar publicly owned, protected area...

s within the boundaries of national forests

United States National Forest

National Forest is a classification of federal lands in the United States.National Forests are largely forest and woodland areas owned by the federal government and managed by the United States Forest Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. Land management of these areas...

. As is the case in Northwestern California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, checkerboarding has resulted in issues with managing national forest land. Checkerboarding was previously applied to these areas during the period of western expansion, and they are now commercial forest land. Conflicting policies establishing the rights of the private owners of this land have caused some difficulties in the local Hardwood timber production economy.

While relieving this land from its checkerboard ownership structure could benefit the timber production economy of the region, it is not always the case that national forests would be better off without any private owners. When a national park is divided into a checkerboard with private owners controlling some of the land, the area over which forest land can be publicly managed is greatly increased.

Native Americans were also negatively affected by federal government checkerboarding policies because railroad land grants were not immune to running through land previously occupied by Native American tribes. This act of unrightful land transfer from the hands of Native Americans to private railroad companies and homestead grantees resulted in conflicts on more than one occasion.

One notable location of conflict is the Chambers Checkerboard – a region occupied by Navajo people

Navajo people

The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...

 before railroad companies were granted the land to construct the transcontinental railroad

First Transcontinental Railroad

The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...

. Tension grew between the Navajo tribe and the settlers of the region due to unexplained deaths that each party blamed on the other. These tensions led to further violence after a white settler was suspected for murdering a Navajo youth without rightful punishment.