A legal case in Wisconsin has raised questions about who is allowed to walk on beaches. Paul Florsheim, a retired professor, was ticketed for trespassing on a Lake Michigan beach he has walked on for over 50 years. The case has sparked widespread discussion around the Great Lakes and raises a question hotly debated in many of the country’s coastal communities: Who is allowed on which beaches?

Public Trust Doctrine

The public trust doctrine establishes people’s rights to use certain lands and waters. The concept originated in Roman law and was carried through English common law into the laws of Britain’s American colonies, and on to the rest of the United States. The division between public trust areas and private land is usually set at the “ordinary high-water mark,” or “mean high tide line.”

Historically, public trust rights included the “right of passage” on foot over land below the ordinary high-water mark. However, the specific rules for any given location are a patchwork established by states along the U.S. seashores, the Great Lakes, and smaller bodies of water. And in some states, there’s no clear legal answer to whether beach walking is allowed.

State-by-State Variations

Legislatures or courts have not consistently addressed beach walking below the high tide line on the oceans. California’s Constitution and Coastal Act strongly protect public access in this zone, while Massachusetts and Maine say even land to the low tide line can be privately owned. Only three of the eight Great Lakes states have taken up the issue – Indiana, Michigan, and New York. All have uniformly recognized the legal right to walk on Great Lakes beaches below the high-water mark.

In the southern Maine coastal community of Wells, there is a years-long fight between people who want to walk on the beach and people who claim to own it. In 1989, the Maine Supreme Court ruled that shorefront property extends beyond the mean high tide line, all the way to the mean low tide line, and that the only public activities allowed between the tide lines are “fishing, fowling, and navigation” – not walking.

Some communities are taking matters into their own hands to protect public access. For example, a group of municipalities in Door County, Wisconsin, have invested more than $26 million to acquire over 2,700 feet of Lake Michigan shoreline and 128 acres of waterfront land for public use.

Original reporting: BridgeDetroit — read the source article.