The following statements as to rights in the road may be useful to some
of our readers. It certainly contradicts certain common opinions:
If a farm deed is bounded by, on or upon a road, it usually extends to
the middle of the roadway.
The farmer owns the soil of half the road, and may use the grass, trees,
stones, gravel, sand or anything of value to him, either on the land or
beneath the surface, subject only to the superior rights of the public
to travel over the road, and that of the highway surveyor to use such
materials for the repair of the road; and these materials may be carted
away and used elsewhere on the road.
No other man has a right to feed his cattle there, or cut the grass or
trees, much less deposit his wood, old carts, wagons or other things
there.
The owner of a drove of cattle that stops to feed in front of your land,
or a drove of pigs which root up the soil, is responsible to you at law,
as much as if they did the same thing inside the fence.
Nobody's children have a right to pick up the apples under your trees,
although the same stand wholly outside of your fence.
No private person has a right to cut or lop off the limbs of your trees
in order to move his old barn or other buildings along the highway, and
no traveller can hitch his horse to your trees in the sidewalk without
being liable, if he gnaws the bark or otherwise injures them.
If your wall stands partly on your land and partly outside the fence, no
neighbor can use it except by your permission.
Nay, more; no man has a right to stand in front of your land and insult
you with abusive language without being liable to you for trespassing on
your land.
He has a right to pass and repass in an orderly and becoming manner; a
right to use the road, but not to abuse it.
But notwithstanding the farmer owns the soil of the road, even he cannot
use it for any purpose which interferes with the use of it by the public
for travel.
He cannot put his pig-pen, wagons, cart, wood or other things there, if
the highway surveyor orders them away as obstructing public travel.
If he leaves such things outside his fence, and within the limits of the
highway, as actually laid out, though some distance from the traveled
path, and a traveller runs into them in the night and is injured, the
owner is not only liable to him for private damages, but may also be
indicted and fined for obstructing a public highway.
And if he has a fence or wall along the highway, he must place it all on
his land, and not half on the road, as in case of division fences
between neighbors.
But as he owns the soil, if the road is discontinued, or located
elsewhere, the land reverts to him, and he may inclose it to the centre,
and use it as part of his farm.--_Judge Bennett._
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For the Companion.