Texas and other states, chose to facilitate settling their vast outlying areas by the process of “checkerboarding” in which the state retained ownership of every other surveyed section (640 acres) of land. This was in an effort to keep one purchaser from owning vast acreage used only for cattle. More settlers meant more trade and population and of course, more tax income for the state. This process also made sure the state kept possession of the average quality of land being sold and settled.
A problem arose with the advent of extensive barbed wire fencing. As large ranches started fencing their checkerboard sections, they often fenced off access to the state owned sections located in between the privately owned sections. In certain areas, the fences were deliberately placed across known trails in an effort to keep new settlers out. This brought complaints to the state that the public was being denied access to Texas Public Lands.
The state took action in the courts making a single corner post to which all intersecting cross fences were tied, illegal. The public must be allowed to access the public lands. The land owners then countered with a new concept in which they set extra corner posts for each intersecting fence, leaving an eight inch gap in between the corner posts. A person could slip between but livestock were still blocked from passage. This was legal but challenged by the state. However, juries decided there was an undeniable gap between the corner posts as prescribed by law and the state lost.
After losing their cases, the state then passed laws requiring gates to be built at regular intervals giving access along trails and to the state owned sections thus ending the “8 inch gap saga.”
