Marengo Cave Co. v. Ross, 212 Ind. 624, 10 N.E.2d 917 (Ind. 1937)
Marengo Cave Co. v.
Can a party acquire title by adverse possession or a prescriptive easement in subterranean cave passages located beneath another's land when the use is entirely underground and not visible or apparent on the surface of the true owner's property?
To obtain title by adverse possession under Indiana law, the claimant's possession must be actual, open, visible, notorious, exclusive, continuous, and hostile (under a claim of right) for the statutory period. A prescriptive easement requires similar elements of open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for the statutory period. The open-and-notorious element is satisfied only when the occupation or use is of such a character as to afford the record owner actual or constructive notice of the adverse claim—i.e., the use must be visible and apparent to a reasonably diligent owner, not concealed or hidden.
No. The cave company could not acquire title by adverse possession or a prescriptive easement in the underground passages beneath Ross's land because its use was hidden and not open and notorious as to Ross's parcel. Title remained with Ross, and the company's claims failed.
Marengo Cave is a leading case illustrating that 'notorious' in adverse possession is a legal term of art concerned with notice to the true owner, not public fame or commercial publicity. It teaches that concealed or subterranean uses typically cannot satisfy adverse possession or prescription because they do not alert a reasonably diligent owner to the encroachment. The case is routinely paired with boundary-encroachment decisions to underscore the policy that adverse possession should punish only owners who ignore visible invasions, not those who fail to discover hidden ones. It also highlights that property ownership includes subsurface estates, but acquisition by limitations requires conduct manifest at or upon the land in a way that communicates an adverse claim.