Chapter 34 - § 34.2 • STATUTORY DEDICATION

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 34.2 • STATUTORY DEDICATION

§ 34.2.1—Statutory Provision

C.R.S. § 31-23-107 provides: "All streets, parks, and other places designated or described as for public use on the map or plat of any city or town or of any addition made to such city or town are public property and the fee title thereto vested in such city or town."

Since the statutory procedures apply only to dedications to cities and towns, dedication to a county may be accomplished only through common-law dedication.⁶

§ 34.2.2—Statutory Dedication Procedure

A statutory dedication operates by way of grant. The law surrounds the act of dedication with all the formalities and solemnities necessary to the creation of a grant;⁷ the plat must be signed, acknowledged, and recorded.⁸ Without a substantial compliance with the statute by the proprietor, the estate in the streets intended to be conveyed does not pass to the city in trust.⁹ Thus, in the absence of an acknowledgment, there is no statutory dedication.¹⁰ Where the requirements of the statute have not been complied with, the subsequent conduct of the donor, or of the municipality, cannot operate to validate the dedication, and the dedication will be a common-law dedication only.¹¹

When the dedication is statutory, no act of acceptance on the part of the municipality is required to impose upon it the obligation to keep the streets in repair. The moment the plat of a city or addition thereto is made, filed, and recorded by the proprietor thereof in compliance with the statute, the fee of all the streets, alleys, avenues, highways, parks, and other parcels of ground, reserved therein to the use of the public, vests in the city in trust for the uses expressed.¹² Where a landowner makes a statutory dedication of portions of his or her property to a city or town for use of the public as streets, avenues, or alleys, he or she has no rights left in the dedicated premises to convey to anyone.¹³ It has been held, however, that the legislature intended by the use of the term "street" to vest in the city such estate or interest as is reasonably necessary to enable it to utilize the surface and so much of the ground underneath as might be required for laying gas pipes, building sewers, and other municipal purposes. In other words, the legislature used the term "fee" not according to its technical meaning, but as vesting in the city a complete, perpetual, and continuous title to the space designated as streets, so long as it used them for purposes...