‘Navigable’ and and ‘commerce’. In one state all you need is enough water to float a log down the river. Much commerce was done during the logging era, besides… isn’t guiding considered commerce?
One of the Ford family (who seem to have a few bucks) tried blocking access to ‘their’ land and lost due to those rules.
I never understood why commerce that ended 100 years ago is still used as the qualifier for access, but that’s me.
I hope the outdated laws in my state don’t force me to put a horse trough or hitching post on my property. 
SCOTUS has held in cases such as Appleby that the state legislatures can define what constitutes “navigable waters” for the purpose of ownership of streambed by private parties.
Agriculture in the east had a big influence on how they were defined. By making only big waters on which commercial vessels like steamboats and barges operated, farmers could build fences across streams and permit their livestock to water in the stream. That necessarily permits the owner to block access.
The navigability doctrines are inconsistent from state to state. Georgia has one that is decidedly in favor of landowners and against public access. The federal courts have really not addressed in great extent any conflict between state navigability doctrines and the federal navigational servitude.
Georgia Canoeing Association v. Henry and Givens v. Ichauway, Inc. are two cases that demonstrate Georgia’s narrow definition of navigability.
http://vlex.com/vid/georgia-canoeing-association-henry-20394415
http://www.olemiss.edu/orgs/SGLC/National/SandBar/3.1comment.htm
It seems those that embrace the idea of ‘diversity’ are the ones hell-bent on closing land and rivers for their own monolithic use.
Odd ideals at best.
Isn’t that the Godawful truth? :rolleyes: Silly, isn’t it? (I could be a bit more un-pc and call it what it is; uh-hum,hypocritical,uh-hum…)
There was a perfect example of that up West of Boulder last year. 
New York courts have ruled that the right to navigate and the right to fish are not the same. You can float a navigable river, and even get out on shore to carry your craft around obstructions, but if the land on both sides of the river is posted, you cannot legally fish while floating, even if you never touch the stream bottom.
Remember that commerce can also include trapping. If anybody has ever legally trapped on a stream in the US and carried so much as a legally-caught muskrat off by floating it, that might well make that stretch of water “commercially navigable”.
Ed
Here’s how New York’s DEC has it worded on their website.
[b]Q. May a person travel in a boat or canoe on a waterway which is posted?
A. Yes, but travel may not include fishing. A person in a vessel has a right of passage on a navigable waterway, even if the bed of the waterway is privately-owned and is posted. A waterway is navigable if it is capable, in its natural state and ordinary volume of water, of transporting, in a condition fit for market, of floating logs or manufactured or agricultural goods to market. A navigable waterway need not be navigable in both directions, nor need it be navigable 12 months of the year. Furthermore, a waterway’s navigability is not destroyed by rapids or other temporary obstacles so long as the rest of the waterway is otherwise navigable. Where such obstacles exist, the right to public navigation authorizes a boater to get out of the vessel and walk alongside the boat to get around such obstacles, or to portage around such obstacles, even over private property above the mean high water mark, so long as the portage is by the most direct and least intrusive safe route possible. The right to navigation does not otherwise authorize the public to go on private land above the mean high water mark, even for access to or egress from a navigable waterway. A 1997 ruling of the New York State Court of Appeals indicates that the public right to navigation does not include the right to walk on the bed of a waterway to fish, or to anchor for the purpose of fishing where the bed of the waterway is privately-owned; or to fish while navigating through privately-owned waters.[/b]
Not quite in the realm of this conversation, but interesting to the discussion
The Rhode Island constitution, Article 1, section 17
Common to most northeast states
Section 17. Fishery rights ? Shore privileges ? Preservation of natural resources.– The people shall continue to enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore, to which they have been heretofore entitled under the charter and usages of this state, including but not limited to fishing from the shore, the gathering of seaweed, leaving the shore to swim in the sea and passage along the shore; and they shall be secure in their rights to the use and enjoyment of the natural resources of the state with due regard for the preservation of their values; and it shall be the duty of the general assembly to provide for the conservation of the air, land, water, plant, animal, mineral and other natural resources of the state, and to adopt all means necessary and proper by law to protect the natural environment of the people of the state by providing adequate resource planning for the control and regulation of the use of the natural resources of the state and for the preservation, regeneration and restoration of the natural environment of the state.
Unless one has very deep pockets and/or is out to prove principle I wouldn’t want to push the law just to have the opportunity to make a point. Poke 'Em, your reading may be correct but county courts in a lot of states disagree with you.
Vic
I thought the law, re, navigable streams, was somewhat confusing and contradictory in Texas, but I find this issue is apparently “a bear” everywhere! If anyone is interested in Texas river fishing, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. has a link to a summary of stream access rights and restrictions: www.tpwd.state.tx.us. Of course, if an armed rancher or farmer is going to argue the point, I think I will avoid that particular location–a piece of paper with the law printed upon it is not bullet-proof.