People who buy a whole bunch of land to live on typically aren’t very keen on government officials bothering them at all.

That goes double for government officials telling them what they can or can’t do with that land.

This man had a county water ditch dug on his property, and was told he couldn’t build a bridge across it for his convenience.

He found the answer, and there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Check out the details!

Can’t build a bridge across the supply ditch? Move your supply ditch.

The backstory:

My grandfather owned some 14 acres of land. There was a state-owned water supply ditch running between the top half and bottom half of this acreage.

To use official roads to get from the top half to the bottom half required a 5 mile detour that gramps had had enough with.

A neighbor made this harder for everyone.

The history:

A neighbor had been granted the appropriate permits and everything required to build a bridge across this supply ditch a half-mile or so up the ditch.

A neighbor of his was disgruntled with the bridge, hooked up some chains to his tractor and pulled that sucker down right into the supply ditch.

The state or county banned building bridges across the supply ditch because of this ass-hat and the debris that was dropped into the supply ditch.

Grandpa, though, was no to be deterred.

The compliance:

He’d had enough driving 10 minutes around to get to his other plot of land and decided he wanted to build this bridge.

Upon learning of the prohibition of bridges across the ditch, he took it upon himself to re-survey his land and the rights granted to the state for the supply ditch to bisect his property.

It turned out, the state built this ditch just 20 feet away from the actual right-of-way that was granted to them for the ditch.

He must have known he had them over a barrel.

He got into a lengthy fight over it with the water board and it finally came down to an ultimatum: Let me build my bridge or move your supply ditch to the proper location.

Ultimately he won this battle and that summer began construction of the abutments and purchased a railroad car which was cut in half and the halves placed side-by-side across the abutments and the supply ditch.

I still remember going out to his farm that summer and sandblasting those railroad cars and then painting it with a special paint to prolong the life of the bridge.

But all good things must come to an end.

The Epilogue:

Years after the bridge was built, the land above the ditch was subdivided and placed in an HOA, the bridge being the property of said HOA.

Parcels of the subdivided land were sold off and people moved in and built homes in this HOA.

These fools couldn’t be arsed to meet once a year, have an official “minutes” of this meeting, and pay a minimal amount to keep the HOA running and the bridge under their control.

Dad and I went out there to try and fix it up after they let this shit lapse and got everything reinstated.

Everything is honkey-dorey again and these morons are warned that we’re not traveling half-way across the country again to fix their lapse.

What did they do?

They let it lapse again.

The HOA is dissolved and as far as we know the bridge now belongs to the county who can open it up for public use so everybody above the ditch can make use of it instead of driving 5 miles around to get to the main highway.

At least Grandpa got what he needed.

Let’s hear what Reddit think of this one!

The top commenter thinks there was an easier (if illegal) solution.

This could even be a revenge tale.

A quick summary of the compliance, though.

I bet the county just loved him.

That bridge sounds pretty epic.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.