Opinion ID: 1153985
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Heading: Common Law Dedication of Streets and Alleys

Text: When the plat of the original Town of Evanston was filed in August, 1870, the Territory of Wyoming had no laws in effect concerning the platting of subdivisions or the dedication of property. The territorial legislature had repealed all laws enacted by the Territory of Dakota which might have affected the question of ownership under a dedication. Chapter 84, Laws of the Wyoming Territory, 1869. Consequently, the common law governs the dedication of streets and alleys in the original plat. Gay Johnson's Wyoming Automotive Service Co., Inc. v. City of Cheyenne, Wyo., 367 P.2d 787 (1961). We have held that dedication of streets and alleys at common law creates an easement:    Under common law, at dedication the public or municipality acquires an easement in the streets and alleys, but the fee remains in the original proprietor or abutting owner. Gay Johnson's Wyoming Automotive Service Co., Inc. v. City of Cheyenne, supra, 367 P.2d at 788. The City's interest under a common-law dedication is sufficient to accommodate the use of the property by the public for street and related purposes, but the City acquires no interest in the minerals underlying the streets. Leadville v. Coronado Mining Co., 37 Colo. 234, 86 P. 1034 (1906); Lambach v. Mason, 368 Ill. 41, 53 N.E.2d 601 (1944). Appellants contend that the dedicatory language associated with the original town plat is broad enough to overcome this common-law rule. The phrase dedicate[d]   to the public use, according to appellants, indicates that the dedicator intended to convey the street areas for more public uses than streets alone. For example, the City has the right to lay sewer and utility lines beneath the surfaces of streets, appellants point out. See Ruby Drilling Co., Inc. v. Billingsly, Wyo., 660 P.2d 377 (1983). Other permissible, subsurface uses would include the mining of oil and gas to obtain revenues for the public coffers, appellants submit. If the dedicator intended to reserve an interest in the minerals beneath the streets, it should have restricted the general dedicatory language, appellants conclude. We cannot agree that the addition of the phrase to the public use enlarges the effect of a common-law dedication. By definition, a dedication of property is an expression of the owner's intent to devote that property to the public use:    [A] dedication is generally defined as the devotion of property to a public use by an unequivocal act of the owner, manifesting an intention that it shall be accepted and used presently or in the future. The intention of the owner to dedicate and acceptance thereof by the public are the essential elements of a complete dedication. Thus it is vital to a dedication of property to public use that it is to be forever and irrevocable after acceptance, and that it be for a public use. 11 McQuillin, Mun Corp § 33.02, p. 636 (3rd ed.).    Dedication is the intentional appropriation of land by the owner to some proper public use. The intention of the owner to set aside lands or property for the use of the public is the foundation and life of every dedication. [Citation.] City of Phoenix v. Landrum & Mills Realty Co., 71 Ariz. 382, 227 P.2d 1011, 1013 (1951). See also Hand v. Rhodes, 125 Colo. 508, 245 P.2d 292, 295 (1952); 4 Tiffany, The Law of Real Property, § 1101, p. 574 (3rd ed. 1975). The dedicatory language attached to the plat of the original Town of Evanston simply expresses the owner's intent to devote the delineated streets and alleys to the public use, in compliance with the elements of a lawful dedication. Under the law of the Territory of Wyoming applicable at the time, such dedication transferred only an easement. Gay Johnson's Wyoming Automotive Service Co., Inc. v. City of Cheyenne, supra. Therefore, the streets and alleys in the original town plat were appropriated for public passage and not for the multiple uses envisioned by appellants. The fact that the public's interest as an easement holder encompasses the right to install utility lines under the streets does not compel the conclusion that the City has the right to remove minerals underlying the streets. Courts have historically recognized that a city's interest in dedicated streets and alleys includes the right to use so much of the ground underneath as might be required for laying gas and water pipes, building sewers, and for other related municipal purposes. Ruby Drilling Co., Inc. v. Billingsly, supra; City of Leadville v. Bohn Mining Company, 37 Colo. 248, 86 P. 1038 (1906). Elliott's treatise, The Law of Roads and Streets, contains the following comprehensive definition of a street: The right of the public in a street is by no means confined to the surface of the way, and this all who set apart land for a street are conclusively presumed to know. `Street means more than the surface; it means the whole surface and as much of the depth as is, or can be, used, not unfairly, for the ordinary purpose of a street. It comprises a depth which authorizes the urban authority to do that which is done in every street, namely, to raise the street, and lay down sewers  for, at the present day there can be no street in a town without sewers, or at least the right to construct them  and, also, for the purpose of laying down gas and water pipes. Street, therefore, includes the surface and so much of the depth as may not unfairly be used as streets are used.' But it has been held that dedication for a street does not deprive the owner of the right to mine underneath without interfering with it. 1 Elliott, The Law of Roads and Streets § 20, pp. 21-22 (4th ed. 1926). The extraction of minerals, unlike the installation of equipment for urban services, is inconsistent with the public's interest in the dedicated property as the holder of easements for passage and transportation. We hold that, in accepting the plat of the original town, the City of Evanston acquired no interest in the minerals underlying its streets and alleys, either by operation of law or as a result of the dedicatory language associated with the plat. The public's interest extends to the use of the surface for transportation and to that portion of the land beneath the surface which is necessary for the construction of streets and the provision of urban services.