I live in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio so places to ride my Scrambler are few and far between. I was lucky enough though to live within 5 minutes of about 100 acres of undeveloped land. This land has attracted off road riders of all kinds for a long, long time. The trails are great with alot of huge hills, creeks, and mud holes. Every night of the week would find 3 or 4 trailers up there with maybe a dozen people on dirt bikes and atvs. There are no homes even close to the trails so it bothered no one and as I said it doesn't have any buildings at all on the land. Tonight I took my youngest son up to ride and when we got to the gravel road that leads back off the main road there was a no trespassing sign posted and the gravel road was blocked off. I couldn't believe it. The nearest place I can even ride now is well over an hours drive from here and it costs me $30 just to get in the place. I guess it's time to either buy my own land or sell the 4 wheelers.

 

You could move .. to Utah.
(sorry, Colorado is already full of Californians!)

 

That is really sad. Here in Nebraska, it is hard to relate to that kind of thing, we can go all over. Not that there are any public lands, but all our neighbors own at least some acerage & we get together every once in a while & just putter around on each other's land or along the gravel roads. Have NEVER gotten in trouble driving along the gravel roads around here. A friend was stopped on the local blacktop by a State Patrol Officer and was told that he wasn't supposed to have his atv on the blacktop, only the grass shoulder, and went on his way. No ticket, no written warning, nothing. I love this place!!!
Not rare to see a guy toting a rifle over his shoulder on the road heading for a prarie dog town either. Was thinking of posting a sign 'no kalifornians alowde' just for laughs.

 

We are very lucky up here too, we have hundreds of miles of trails that I can leave my house on the ATV to access. Fortunately up here it is looked at as good for the local economy. Allot of people are behind it. I did have a local acces trail closed , due to kids who would not stay out of the sand pit, that is all the guy asked he had no problem with is using his land to get to one of the main trails, but some kids would not stay off so he had no alternative but to post it. I stopped one time and asked them why they were riding there and I got told off , they were lucky they were under 18 or I would have kicked some irresponsible atv riding a**.

 

Crawdad, Sorry about what happend but there are reasons it did. Here's what you can attempt to do if you really want to ride. I've been on both sides of the fence so what I say here may get blasted or praised, it just depends on your mindset.

1. The owner or someone got wise and is tring to save their land by keeping the riders out. Believe me if you or any rider is helo-lifted from that undeveloped property riding bikes and that land is not posted or attempt to show gated entrance, the blood thirsty drouling lawyers will be looking for the owner of the undeveloped land. I'm not real sure but I believe there is a something somewhere about posted and unposted land that will wreck your day in court as an owner of land and a rider of bikes. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

Solution: Find the owner and ask to ride in person with perhaps your son. It's humbling but what the hell, they may say yes and give you the green light. Your ticket in could be as easy as a post-it note with written permission, or a 1-pager signed and sealed. Then, never assume anything. Continue to keep in touch and refresh the asking every now and then, and of course say thanks as well.

When I ride up at gramp's farm he is surrounded by a couple of farms for sale and some tree farm property. Before we head out we just call, say we're up at gramps and is it ok to go through or back by whatever and shoot the BS. Hey, to shoot the BS for 10 minutes to ride 400 acres for the day.... it's worth it.

One thing just came to mind. Could it have been posted and closed because someone already got hurt? Hope this helped a little. Let us know how it turns out.

 

Fishbones, hey I totally agree with your thoughts on riding on land that isn't my own. I am a hunter and many times I've asked farmers for permission to hunt. Some have said yes and some have said no. I have no problem with the ones that say no, they don't know me from Adam. For all they know I could go out and shoot one of their cows. There are no local owners of this land that I am aware of or I would already have asked permission. It is land that's owned by a development corporation I believe looking to sell it as commercial property. I fully understand the
issue with injury liability though. It's just that so many people have used the land for off roading for so long that I find it hard to believe that whoever owns the land wasn't already aware of it being used. You're right though maybe someone got hurt, so they blocked access to it. I would never trespass on someones posted land but this was never posted in the past. I'm just going to miss being able to take my boys out to ride after work in the evening. We've had alot of fun there. I guess I should just consider myself lucky for the fun times that we did have there.
Oh well, it's a good excuse to buy some land now, unfortunately any land in this area is very expensive so I'd have to drive way out to find anything affordable. I envy those people on the forum that are so close to places that they can ride. That would be sweet.

 

Crawdad, I live in south eastern Indiana and alot of folks around here go over to Haspin Acres. I think it's around Laurel, IN. I know it's not close to home but it might give you some place to ride till you kind find some land of your own. Good luck.

http://motocrosspark.com/index.htm is the website for Haspin Acres.

 

I can relate. Not many places to ride on Long Island either. I was lucky there is a 800 acre farm one block away. I got permission from the owner to ride on it. I only had two little Yamaha 80cc for the kids to ride. So I bought my Sportsman to ride with them. My son got to big for the Yamaha so I bought him a Trailboss. Kicker is one week later farm was sold to build houses. So now they sit until we go to our house in Vermont which is about once a month (6hrs each way).

 

Westport, just got back from Haspin a little while ago. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to get there after work. I didn't get there til 5:30
so the most I could ride was 2 1/2 hours before it got too dark. I thought the old man at the front gate would cut me some slack since I was only going to be there a couple of hours but he charged me full price $30.
My sons and I did get to have some fun though. It was enough time for me to get the Scrambler buried so deep in a mud hole that the 4 wheel drive couldn't even budge it. At $30 a pop I probably won't be riding as much as I used to but I'll just have to make sure I have a good time when I do get a chance to go.