County of Tuolumne v. Crook

VAN DYKE, P. J. This is an appeal from a judgment which enjoined appellants from interfering with the use by the public of a road which crosses their ranch. The county brought the action, alleging that the road was a public road and that the defendants were interfering with its use. By their answer defendants denied the road was a public road. By their cross-complaint they asked that their title be quieted against the county in respect to its claims. The trial court made the following findings:

“That there is in existence and use a roadway of sufficient width to accommodate the passage of a standard motor vehicle of the character of passenger car or standard truck, which said roadway traverses a course beginning approximately at the northerly end of the county owned and maintained county road (belonging to the County of Tuolumne Road System) running from Groveland in said County, State of California, known as the ‘Phelan-Mogan Road’, and in a general northerly direction to defendants and cross-complainants’ lands (described in the Answer and Cross-Complaint on file here) ; thence in a general northerly direction on the east side of the fence fencing the lands of defendants, and cross-complainants along said fence line to a wooden gate in said barbed wire fence, which said wooden gate closes and attaches to a large pine tree; and which is located on the lands of defendants and cross-complainants described as aforesaid and more particularly in Section 9, T. 1 S., R. 16 E., M.D.B. and M.; thence through said gate in a general northwesterly direction across said Section 9, and a portion of Sections 8, 5 and 6 of said T. 1 S., R. 16 E., M.D.B. and M. to the northerly boundary of said lands of defendants and cross-complainants . . . and which said road is commonly known as the ‘Mohican Mine Road’; (and from which point after leaving defendants and cross-complainants’ lands said road traverses Section 6 of T. 1 S., R. 16 E., M.D.B. and M., and portions of Sections 31 and 32 of T. 1 N., R. 16 E., M.D.B. and M., as a road, to the Mary Ellen Mine, and from said Mary Ellen Mine traverses and continues as a trail through the Mohican Mine property to a footbridge crossing the Tuolumne River in Section 32, T. 1 N., R. 16 E., M.D.B. and M., all in Tuolumne County, California.)

“That beginning about 1901 or 1902 and for many years thereafter the public continuously used said roadway and trail openly, notoriously, adversely to the owners of the lands it crossed and under claim of right thereto for the purposes [493]of hauling of goods in and out, the transportation of miners and laborers, and by the sportsmen for the purpose of hunting, fishing, packing and horseback riding.