## Facts

- A common grantor owned a large tract in Cassia County, Idaho, used as a dry farm and a cattle ranch.
- The ranch operation historically involved driving cattle across the farm to a spring (Butler Springs) for watering and then using a road on the farm to reach federal grazing lands.
- In 1956, the farm portion was conveyed to new owners with recorded reservations for the ranch: a right-of-way and the right to use water from the spring “for the watering of livestock owned by the sellers.”
- The farm was later conveyed to the Johnsons, subject to the earlier spring-related rights.
- The ranch was later sold to the Nelsons together with the recorded “right for stock water” from the spring; successive ranch owners continued the same annual use of the spring and road.
- The Johnsons later attempted to treat the Nelsons’ use as revocable “permission,” then in 1978 blocked access to the spring and road, prompting suit.

## Issues

1. Whether the reserved right to use water from Butler Springs was an easement appurtenant that ran with the ranch (dominant estate), or a personal right limited to the original reserving grantors.
2. Whether the Nelsons established a prescriptive easement over the access road across the Johnsons’ land based on long-term use by the Nelsons and their predecessors.

## Decision

- The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the Nelsons.
- The court held the Butler Springs stockwater right was an easement appurtenant benefiting the ranch and therefore passed to subsequent ranch owners, including the Nelsons.
- The court upheld recognition of a prescriptive easement over the access road because the use was open, notorious, continuous for the statutory period, and under a claim of right rather than revocable permission.

## Legal Principles

- An easement is appurtenant when it is intended to benefit a particular parcel (the dominant estate) and ordinarily transfers with that land upon conveyance.
- Intent to create an appurtenant easement may be inferred from the reservation’s language, the surrounding circumstances, and consistent use tied to the dominant parcel’s operation.
- A prescriptive easement requires open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for the statutory period under a claim of right; later characterization of the use as “permission” does not defeat prescription where the historical use was as of right.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that the spring reservation was tied to and benefited the ranching parcel, so it ran with the ranch as an easement appurtenant, and that decades of visible, regular cattle-drive use established a prescriptive easement over the road despite the servient owners’ later attempt to revoke access.


Nelson v. Johnson, 106 Idaho 385, 679 P.2d 662 (Idaho 1984)