In 19 states, you must leave immediately if you see purple paint on trees or fence posts while hiking.
This is because purple paint in these areas indicates that it is private property, meaning that you are guilty of an unlawful act and are at risk of criminal prosecution.
Furthermore, in a country where citizens have the constitutional right to own guns, ignoring these markings can put your life in serious danger.
States with purple dye laws include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
It is important to note, however, that in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, purple paint is not intended to deter criminals. It is only used to let people know that they are not allowed to hunt or fish in the marked area.
Purple paint markings are used to warn people that they are entering the area if they remain in the area
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In the 2000s, many state legislators believed that using paint was more cost-effective than posting signs that could be stolen or defaced.
Kentucky is the latest state to allow landowners to use purple dye in this way. In April, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear signed Senate Bill 118.
Similar bills were considered in the Connecticut and Georgia general assemblies before their respective legislative sessions concluded this year.
It is unclear why purple became the color of choice, but it is likely that when other states saw their neighbors using this color, they chose to maintain a sense of uniformity to avoid confusion.
Despite this, some states still choose to use different colors.
In Idaho, Montana and Nevada, orange paint is used to warn trespassers.
Orange paint is also used in Arizona and Utah, but only to prohibit hunting on private land. Utah also allows landowners to use bright yellow paint for the same purpose.
The real outliers are Maryland and Nebraska, which use blue and red paint respectively.
Nearly all states with these laws also regulate the size of the markings on trees or poles. Above is how Maine regulates them
Many states dictate how far apart these markers must be. Pennsylvania law states that they must be a maximum of 100 feet apart.
Virtually all states with such laws also regulate the size of the markers on trees or posts and how far apart they must be.
The most common standard is that they should be about eight inches long, two and a half inches wide, and three to five feet above the ground.
As for the distance between markers, some states have a maximum of 100 feet (30 meters), while other states have a maximum of 1,000 feet (304 meters).
Other states do not have laws allowing citizens to paint objects on their land in lieu of signs on private property.
Some have tried in vain to pass such bills over the years.
For example, lawmakers in Minnesota and Mississippi introduced bills requiring purple paint, but neither bill made it past the committee stage.
Nearly identical attempts in Vermont and Ohio have failed in recent years.
Oklahoma probably suffered the most high-profile failure to pass a purple paint law in 2005. The bill narrowly passed both the House and Senate, but was ultimately vetoed by then-Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat.
Henry argued in his veto order that while “the concept of this legislation is good,” it could cause confusion because “many citizens may not understand the meaning of purple paint.”
The Oklahoma Farm Bureau strongly criticized the move, accusing Henry of favoring lawbreakers over landowners.
“Governor Henry’s veto of Senate Bill 430 aids and abets those lawbreakers who trespass on private property,” said Jeramy Rich, then-director of Public Policy for Oklahoma Farm Bureau. “He clearly chose to protect lawbreakers and ignore the wishes of landowners.”
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, signed a purple paint bill into law on April 17, 2024, making his state the last to pass such a measure.
Landowners often paint other objects within their property lines besides trees, including rocks. Some also combine the painted markings with actual “no trespassing” signs
As such laws gain traction, activists and lawmakers are discussing what it would mean to enact similar measures.
An outdoor advocate from New York, where signs are the only legally binding way to warn people to stay off your property, told The Times Union in 2021 that he believes there are pros and cons to using purple paint.
“If they have a lot of land, which can be miles of boundary lines, they have to maintain signs every year and sometimes they get vandalized,” said Andy Mossey, an advocacy coordinator for the Catskill Center. “Purple paint prevents those kinds of problems from happening.”
But as Governor Henry said nearly 20 years ago, Mossey believes there is a risk that the paint markings will mean nothing to the uninformed.
“The advantage of signage is that anyone walking along a boundary can easily read that it is a private property boundary,” he said.
“If it’s just purple paint with no signage, people are less likely to understand what it is unless the state itself and organizations within the state do a good job of communicating that information to all visitors.”
That’s why some states, such as Tennessee, require homeowners to post at least one clearly visible “No Trespassing” sign in addition to any painted markings.
Currently, just over half of the states in the U.S. have standardized the use of paint to repel intruders, and it is likely that more states will follow suit in the coming years.