Public Access to Water
Understanding what’s public is complicated. We break down how you can better understand what’s fair game when it comes to rivers, streams, and the ocean.
Updated:
Mar 24, 2025Table of contents
Rivers and Streams
Creeks drain water from the high mountains, funneling runoff into mainstem rivers that eventually reach the ocean. Every single state in the country is laden with creeks and rivers, so there’s likely some kind of body of water not far from your backyard. Taken as a whole, this abundance of waterways creates a mishmash of management: Some are private, some are public, and other bodies of water are just straight-up ambiguous. Here’s what you need to know to understand what’s public and what’s not.
For starters, we’ll dig into the simplest part of river entry: public access points. From fishing access sites to boat ramps, there are thousands of designated public access points to rivers and streams across the country. In general, you’ll need to find the waterway you’re interested in and look at a map. State websites are a good starting point. Montana, for example, offers a handy pdf guide of all the official, state-sanctioned river access points. Wyoming has a slightly more high-tech online map. Some rivers have their own detailed mile-by-mile logs (especially popular wilderness and permit-only rivers like the Selway, Middle Fork of the Salmon, Rogue, and more). States and federal agencies like the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management administer these put-ins and access points.
Mapping apps like OnX also offer stellar and intuitive layers featuring publicly accessible fishing access points and boat ramps and ownership details. In short, you can find out where land is public, and, where it’s not, you can dig into who actually owns it. A solid rule of thumb is that if the river or stream you want to access lies within state or federal land, you’re likely good to wade in wherever you like. This is great in national forests and wilderness areas. However, when private property abuts a public waterway—as is the case along the vast majority of river miles nationwide—the access picture gets much, much muddier.
Official access points are helpful to determine where you can enter the river. But when you decide to leave your starting point, things get trickier. The backbone of river management is this: the states own the riverbeds that lie beneath all waterways and, in general, have the discretion to manage access to floating, fishing, swimming, wading, and more. This means 50 different ways of managing public access to water exist. Thankfully, there’s similarity and overlap between management schemes, so we’ll break down the common threads throughout river and stream access management across the country.
The principle underlying wildlife management and other complex natural resource decisions is the same principle behind water access management. It’s called the public trust doctrine, and it holds that natural resources—everything from deer and elk to rivers and streams—are owned by everyone. The state holds those resources in trust for the good of its citizens.
This is an ancient doctrine dating back to the Roman Empire. Even 2,000 years ago, people faced some of the same legal problems we have today. One particularly relevant example is this: Imagine you’re a fisherman wading into the sea to make your living. You find yourself in front of a luxury villa (yes, that was a thing even in Ancient Rome). Does the owner of that villa have a right to stop you from fishing there? Roman legal doctrine held that certain things—including the ocean, seashore, air, and flowing water (or, in other words, rivers)—are owned in common by everyone.
This doctrine evolved over the years, but it found footing in the earliest days of the American Republic. In 1774, just as the First Continental Congress began and a year after the Boston Tea Party, a case in the Provincial Court of the Province of Maryland arose over the legality of filling the Patapsco River with sand and stones. “The banks of a river, also the sea shore, are public by the law of nations,” the judge held.
Today, the public trust doctrine is the backbone of natural resource law, and it defines how water access works everywhere in the country. However, the doctrine only applies to bodies of water which meet certain criteria. Namely, the water needs to be “navigable.” But what does that mean, and who decides? We break it down below.
Navigability is another key aspect of access to rivers and streams. If a waterway is considered “navigable,” then it’s owned by the state. A “non-navigable” waterway, on the other hand, can be privately owned. So, how do you know what’s navigable? It’s tricky.
The federal definition says that a river is navigable if it can be used for transportation for commerce. But in states, things get more complicated. Colorado, for example, has a history of arguing that no rivers in their state meet that standard: they’re too steep and full of too much whitewater to be of any use to commercial businesses (though whitewater guides and outfitters beg to differ). In short, no single definition of navigability flies in every state.
One of the older tests of navigability is a “log test”: Is the river large enough for a commercial-grade log to float down? After all, one of the country’s historical commercial uses of many rivers was timber: flotillas of cut trees bobbed downstream from one location to the next. In some spots, the very fact that recreation is possible on a river is enough to constitute navigability. In others, the ability to float a small boat during part of the year suffices. Other states, like South Dakota, are wildly specific: A waterway is navigable if it can support a one-person boat between May 1 and September 30 in at least two out of every 10 years.
Navigability is just scratching the surface of how water access differs by state. From here, we dive into the nitty gritty of state laws, starting with the most permissive means of water access regulation, down to the least permissive.
Generally, access rules are patchy and ill-defined at best. But when people get arrested and the issue goes to court, the judicial system can define how it all works. This is exactly what happened in Montana back in the 1980s. Two Montana Supreme Court cases centered around river access: One was about a landowner who tried to close off six miles of the Dearborn River, and the other concerned a landowner who tried to erect a cable spanning the Beaverhead to prevent anglers from floating through his property. The court was clear in its decisions: The public trust doctrine protected Montanans’ rights to use rivers, and all streams should be publicly accessible up to the high water mark.
The following year, the legislature stepped in and codified that precedent. The public, Montana law says, is free to use any waterway up to what’s called the “ordinary high water mark,” which refers to the point that, on average, the river reaches on the bank during runoff.
This standard means that during high water, you can float anywhere you like, but you might be more limited in where you can camp or shore your boat along the river. But come late summer, when the water is low and the banks are dry, you can walk next to the water as far as you’d like or beach your boat up on any gravel bar you come by. You can’t cross private land to get to or from the stream. But once you’re in the riverbed, you can travel freely. If you confront a barrier and have to portage, you’re permitted to do so—as long as you take the most direct way possible. Bridges on public roads also generally allow points of entry and exit.
Today, the Big Sky State’s stream access rule is often called one of the strongest for recreationists in the country. Some landowners have continued to protest, and more arrests and lawsuits have occurred. But courts have continued to uphold the law. Other states, too, have similar legal standards for regulating river access. Idaho, Oregon, and California, for example, allow streambed access up to the ordinary high water mark.
In theory, Wisconsin’s access law operates like Montana’s: everything up to the ordinary high water mark is public. However, to avoid uncertainty about what constitutes that mark and enshrine a more intuitive standard, the state put the “Keep Your Feet Wet” test into practice. In short, you can wade anywhere you want in a river as long as you’re keeping your feet wet. If your feet are dry, you might be breaking the law. This is more limiting than Montana’s standard since it doesn’t allow you to walk dry gravel beneath the high water mark. But it does clear up ambiguity on where exactly recreators are and aren’t allowed.
New York state also allows public access on all navigable waters up to the high water mark (that said, fishing rights might vary where rivers pass through private land). But the state has uniquely undertaken a massive “Public Fishing Rights Easement” program. Under the program, the state purchases permanent easements that allow anyone with a fishing license to throw a line in streams running through private land. At the same time, the easements grant walking access on a 33-foot strip of land on each side of the river bank. The state has secured easements on more than 1,300 miles of streams on about 400 different waterways.
Non-restrictive access schemes, like those of Montana and Idaho, benefit recreationists but often enrage landowners. Other states flip the script on whose voices are loudest when it comes to water access. Colorado, for example, has some of the nation’s most stringent stream access rules.
As mentioned above, Colorado doesn’t consider any of its streams navigable. That makes for a convoluted set of access laws prioritizing land ownership above public use, and enforcement varies. For example, there’s a dictum in much of the state that floating is fine as long as those onboard never touch the bed or bank of the stream. But this was never enshrined into law, and landowners can still install barbed wire fences across rivers to prevent float-through access—a potentially life-threatening practice, especially for kayakers.
Still, boaters do generally have river access, so long as they enter and exit from publicly accessible, designated access points. However, those interested in stepping out of the boat to, for example, wade fish are out of luck when passing through private land.
Colorado is also a test case that illustrates how these access standards are still actively playing out in court. In 2023, the state’s Supreme Court ruled against an 81-year-old angler who had sued to gain access to a stretch of the Arkansas River blocked by a private landowner. The landowner had thrown rocks at him and even fired a bullet in his direction. In his court filing, he tried to show that the Arkansas River was, indeed, navigable—which could have forever changed Colorado water access law. However, his case was thrown out when the judge ruled the man had no standing.
For now, Colorado remains one of the least permissive states in the nation for river recreation. Many other states have more straightforward but similarly strict river access laws. Wyoming, for example, doesn’t allow public access to streambeds—even when water is low. Arizona and New Mexico are in the same boat. In these states, recreationists must stay in their vessels once they hit the water.
To find out more about stream access laws where you live, dig into this fascinating and useful guide to stream access in all 50 states published in 2017 by the nonprofit group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Importantly, standards nationwide continue to change through lawsuits and litigation. Since the beginning of 2025 alone, a New Mexico judge ordered that private landowners remove fences on the Pecos River and Georgia lawmakers released a suite of possible solutions to public access issues in the Peach State’s waterways. If you’re unsure of how it works where you want to hit the river, be sure to do your due diligence.
Ocean Beaches
Rivers and streams are far from the only water bodies in the country where questions about public access shape where we can surf, fish, wade, or boat. Many of the rules for beach access are similar to those of rivers and streams. The main outlier is Maine, the only state in the country that allows purely private beaches. Outside of the far Northeast, the public trust doctrine once again runs the show. In general, it’s best to stick to documented public access points (and there are thousands of those nationwide). Instead of dealing with the ordinary high water mark, defined by the flush of water associated with runoff, beach access is generally defined by the ocean’s high tide. We’ll break down a few of the most demonstrative examples below.
In Hawaii, access to the ocean is part of the public trust. All beaches are publicly accessible and considered public land below where the highest waves hit. (Though there are a few exceptions on beaches that are technically part of federally-owned military bases.) In general, the zone where the highest waves hit is evidenced by a line of debris and vegetation. Still, this is a complicated zone to unpack: the Hawaii Supreme Court decided in 2006 that the vegetation line wouldn’t suffice to define the high wave point, since some landowners had taken to planting bands of vegetation lower down on the beach to dissuade public access. As a whole, Hawaii has exceptionally strong public access laws—even through private property. New development, for example, is required to ensure continued public access to beaches. But private residences and buildings that existed before the state’s access laws were passed have been grandfathered in.
Another interesting test case of beach access is Texas. With 367 miles of coastline, beach access in the Lone Star State was enshrined into law by the 1959 Texas Open Beaches Act. According to the act, all Texas beaches are open to the public between the vegetation line and the mean low tide line. This means a huge swathe of dry sand is public.
California has about 840 miles of coastline—the third most in the country—and the state’s constitution and landmark 1976 legislation called the California Coastal Act protect public access to beaches. The public has the right to access all beaches in California, even on private property, below the mean high tide line. More practically, this means that beach-goers, whether they’re surfing, fishing, or just playing in the waves, are allowed to go where they please along the coastline as long as they stay within the area where the sand is wet. Anything above that, where the sand is dry, is subject to private ownership. This is similar to Hawaii’s rule—though the “wet sand” dictum is a bit more restrictive.
Even though California has a fairly liberal public access law, private land blocking entrance to the beaches makes things complicated. Wealthy landowners have a long history of cutting off access roads that can be crucial to enjoying the waves. In 2010, for example, a billionaire venture capitalist began closing and locking gates on a road that passed through his property. That road was the only way to access Martins Beach, a popular surf spot about 30 miles from San Francisco. Aspects of that lawsuit have been ongoing for about 15 years, but judges have consistently said that the locked gates illegally restricted access.
Florida, too, preserves access to beaches anywhere below the “mean high water” line. Florida has more miles of coastline than any other state but Hawaii. Interestingly, state legislation recently changed the law around so-called “prescriptive easements” (you can learn more about easements here). These are pathways that historically have had uninterrupted use as public access to beaches. Now, a judge must rule that the easement exists—which, according to the Surfrider Foundation, has led to the proliferation of “no trespassing” signs along traditional access points to beaches.
What This All Means For You
Know the law, do the research where you’ll be recreating, and plan your trip
Research, talk to state officials and your local river and ocean nonprofits (the Surfrider Foundation is a great source for beach access across the country), and get a firm grasp of the laws surrounding the stretch of river or beach where you plan to recreate. For rivers in particular, there are also a slew of other logistics to consider: Is the river permit only? If so, what’s the season? Where can you camp? Do you need a “groover” to pack out your waste? What’s the ideal streamflow if you plan to float?
Launch from publicly accessible points and access them from public roads
Don’t knowingly cross private property boundaries to access your put-in or take-out. Respecting legally closed gates. If you do cross private property, ensure you either have permission from the landowner or are crossing via an established easement.
Respect the waterway and adjacent landowners.
Don’t make unnecessary noise or leave trash in the river or on land. Practice good etiquette everywhere on the beach or in the river, especially when adjacent to private land. In short, be a good neighbor. Establishing good relationships with landowners is an important step to develop mutual goodwill, which can help enable continued access.
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