Jerry D. Patterson v. Buffalo Natl. River

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

In 1939, the Jack Hall family acquired approximately 160 contiguous acres in northern Arkansas. The family divided that acreage and sold about half of it to the federal government in 1976. Ten years later, after the government specifically denied that the rest of the acreage had any easement rights across the federal land, the Hall family sold the rest of the acreage to Jerry and Mary Lou Patterson. In 1994, the Pattersons sued the federal government under the Quiet Title Act, see 28 U.S.C. § 2409a, seeking a declaratory judgment that they owned an…