It’s from the days when records were a lot harder to track down and someone could just die or disappear. After a certain amount of time the state just has to just call it or else the land’s ownership is locked up forever. That’s why the term of adverse possession is generally lower in the Western “frontier” states than the Eastern states, it was a lot more perilous to stake a claim there and there was a lot of turnover, with poor records. People have successfully adversely possessed abandoned houses in places like Vegas though, and more power to them.
It should be noted that trashing a house, setting fires, shitting in the corner, and inviting 30 of your friends to join you isn’t the way this is done. You have to “openly and notoriously” occupy the property, which basically means presenting yourself as the owner. So you live there, keep the place up, and most importantly pay the property taxes. Basically present yourself in such a way that everyone thinks you are the owner.
You’re right. I used to be “no mow” when I lived in the city and the burbs, but now that I have a rural acreage, I’ve realized that you have to use every trick in the book to even have a chance against invasives.
Tomorrow I’m renting a brush mower to take out an acre of 8 foot tall Himalayan blackberry that’s completely choked out a meadow. It’s flowered, but hasn’t set fruit, so I need to get it now. I’ll have to follow that up with herbicide application in late summer because it has vigorous root energy storage. That’ll be year one of at least three years of restoration. This is on top of wineberry, tree of heaven, stilt grass, japanese honeysuckle, and autumn olive. It physically blocks animals, consumes all the sunlight, and none of this shit supports native lepidoptera so it totally fucks up the food chain.
I wish I could just let it be and it would be fine, but that ship sailed a hundred years ago. The upside is in areas where there’s been active remediation the forest looks fucking fantastic.