This is a great point. It would make a lot more sense simply to require a 25-foot easement along the lines of the checkerboard for unrestricted public access or a road. That would have the effect of forcing the ranchers to move their fences back ~12 feet.

In compensation, ranchers could be given the right to create structures or rights-of-way on those same easements to connect their diagonal pieces so as to make them more useable, as long as the public has a reasonable right to access their areas.

This situation honestly makes me wonder how the ranchers even use these squares, since they face the exact same access problem, just with the opposite corners.

> they face the exact same access problem, just with the opposite corners

They don’t face the same access problems.

They can cross public land.

But they don't have the same access problem because the public squares don't have access restrictions.

I think the point is that private owners might run into the same issue of needing to cross private land to get to their private parcel.

I understood the situation here to be that the same private owner owned all of the private squares in this particular area. I would assume that most private owners won't be interested in buying squares deep in the checkerboard for access reasons.

There are also public roads cutting through fairly regularly in these areas.