The National Park Service is working on a land exchange that would give a developer a quarter-mile strip of Yosemite's western boundary for a private road the agency and two federal courts refused for two decades, NOTUS reported Friday.
The developer is a limited-liability company operated by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Las Vegas real estate and investment firm that paid $4 million in 2024 for 83 acres just outside the park in Mariposa County, surrounded by Stanislaus National Forest. Kingsbarn's chief executive, Jeff Pori, wants a short road connecting the property to one of the park's main roads. Today the parcel is reached by an old forest road more than 10 miles from a park entrance, about an hour and a half from Yosemite Valley, according to NOTUS, which cited four people familiar with the discussions and agency documents it reviewed. In return the Park Service would receive California land of roughly equal value that has not been identified.
An Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee that the story "relies on anonymous allegations to manufacture a political narrative that simply is not true," and that "there has been no political pressure to reach a predetermined outcome, and claims suggesting the Department is secretly working to hand over NPS land to a private developer are false." A Park Service spokesperson told NOTUS that "no final decisions have been made."
But the existence of the proposal is not in dispute. Lanny Davis, an attorney for Kingsbarn, confirmed to NOTUS after publication that the company is pursuing what he called "a land exchange under the law," and The New York Times reported the plan separately, citing federal officials and documents it reviewed.
Federal land exchanges are routine, and the law that governs them at national parks lets the Interior secretary trade park land for property of about the same value without a vote of Congress. The Park Service normally uses that authority to absorb private parcels inside a park. Trading a piece of a park to one owner so the owner can build a road is an "unusual case," a former Park Service official told NOTUS, and the outlet reports it has been pursued quietly. Whether the agency can do it, and what the strip is worth, are the questions the process now turns on.
The road has been asked for, and refused, for longer than Kingsbarn has owned the land. The parcel is the old Hazel Green Ranch, a stage stop on the Coulterville Road, which became the first wheeled route into Yosemite Valley when it opened in 1874. Lewis Geyser, a developer from Solvang, bought it through a Delaware LLC in 1998 and planned a 300-unit development of cottages and tent cabins. He spent years asking the Bush and Obama administrations for a short private road into the park, NOTUS reported.
He sued in 2007, claiming rights to two stagecoach-era routes, Old Coulterville Road and Crane Flat Road, that ran from Coulterville through his property to Highway 120 near Crane Flat. The case, Hazel Green Ranch LLC v. Department of the Interior, rested first on R.S. 2477, an 1866 statute that granted rights of way across public land, and after that theory was thrown out, on California easement law. The district court dismissed the suit with prejudice, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed on July 27, 2012, finding that once Mariposa County abandoned the old roads, Hazel Green lost any claim as an abutting landowner, and rejecting as unsupported its claims to an implied easement and an easement by necessity.
The distinction the courts drew applies to every private parcel enclosed by public land, where the owner is owed a way out but not a better one. Hazel Green already had a road, old and winding, through Forest Service land, and the judges found no right to a second. What Kingsbarn is asking for now is the road the courts said the owner could not demand, obtained through a negotiated exchange instead of a lawsuit.
Kingsbarn's LLC calls the property "Sanctuary at Yosemite" in records NOTUS reviewed, and it approached Interior about the road almost as soon as it took title in 2024. "We got an email from the new owner, reopening this issue that we felt was long closed," Cicely Muldoon, who ran Yosemite for about five years and retired shortly after President Trump took office in 2025, told NOTUS. "Whoever bought the land hadn't done their due diligence and realized that this was not a possibility by law, to build a new entrance essentially into Yosemite National Park for private purposes."
Since then, NOTUS reported, Park Service staff have met with Kingsbarn every few weeks at the direction of political appointees, sent progress updates to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's office, and been criticized by political staff for moving too slowly, claims Interior's statement disputes. Davis, a former Clinton White House counsel who sometimes attends the meetings with Pori, told NOTUS the road "does not endanger any endangered species, and is simply a road."
The exchange would run under 54 U.S.C. 102901(b), the section of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act that lets the Interior secretary accept private land inside a park unit and convey in return federal land in the same state that the secretary judges "suitable for exchange or other disposal," with values "approximately equal" and any gap made up in cash. The Park Service has no general authority to sell park land, and a boundary change made solely to remove park acreage requires an act of Congress, according to a Congressional Research Service review of federal land authorities. An easement, which NOTUS says officials are weighing as an alternative to a full transfer, would convey an interest in the strip without moving the boundary.
When Sequoia and Kings Canyon used the same authority in November 2018, the parks offered eleven federally owned cabins in Kings Canyon's Wilsonia Historic District for vacant private lots inside the park, and came out holding more of their own interior, which is the direction these trades usually run.
An appraisal of the Yosemite strip is under way and has proved difficult and slow, NOTUS reported. No raw-land appraisal can account for what a park road does to the value of the 83 acres at the other end of it. "Obviously this looks kind of unseemly, with the value of this property potentially exploding with the deal," one person familiar with the agency's conversations told NOTUS.
Congress cut 542 square miles from Yosemite in 1905 and more in 1906, mostly timber, mineral and grazing country, and by 1937 the park was nearly 30 percent smaller than the one created in 1890, a history traced in a 2016 study in Ecology and Society. Some of it came back through purchases in the 1930s, including about 12,000 acres between the Tuolumne and Merced groves. Those were acts of Congress and purchases; an agency trading a piece of the park to a developer is the step the former officials who spoke with NOTUS described as new.
Members of Congress learned of the exchange early this year through a notification NOTUS describes as vague, one that implied the Land and Water Conservation Fund would be used and named no developer. The senators who lead the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the fund left Yosemite off their list of endorsed projects, Sen. Jeff Merkley's office told NOTUS, and both California senators told NOTUS they oppose the deal. "Projects should be chosen on merit, not on an applicant's connections to high-ranking Trump Administration officials," Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement to NOTUS.
NOTUS also reported that Pori has done business with firms tied to the administration, among them the Newmark Group, which Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick chaired before joining the cabinet, and that his small monthly donations to Republican committees began in October 2024. Kingsbarn did not respond to its request for comment.
"This is so ridiculous, it makes you sick," Don Neubacher, a former Yosemite superintendent now with the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, told The New York Times. The National Parks Conservation Association called the plan unlawful, citing the earlier court ruling, and would not discuss its legal strategy.
If the exchange advances, the Park Service has said it would be subject to environmental review and public notification, which normally means a scoping notice and a comment period. Watch the Yosemite news release page and regulations.gov for a docket. Nothing about the drive in from the Big Oak Flat entrance, about 25 miles and 45 minutes from the Valley, changes until something is built.
The appraisal of the strip, which would set the price of a quarter mile of Yosemite, is still under way.
How we reported this
This article draws on the following sources, accessed August 28 and 29, 2026:
- Trump Is Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer, NOTUS, Anna Kramer, published August 28, 2026. The original report, sourced to four people familiar with the discussions and agency documents NOTUS reviewed, with on-record statements from the National Park Service, Kingsbarn attorney Lanny Davis, former superintendent Cicely Muldoon, Sen. Alex Padilla, Sen. Jeff Merkley's office, and the National Parks Conservation Association. Claims about internal pressure on staff are NOTUS's reporting and are disputed by the Interior Department.
- Trump Administration Looks to Give a Swath of Yosemite Park to Developer, The New York Times, Shawn Hubler and Maxine Joselow, published August 28, 2026, syndicated at GV Wire. Independent confirmation of the plan, with statements from Interior spokesperson Aubrie Spady and Don Neubacher.
- Report: Trump officials seek to transfer Yosemite land to private developer, The Sacramento Bee, Camila Pedrosa, published August 28, 2026, via the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Carries the Interior Department's full statement disputing the NOTUS report.
- Hazel Green Ranch, LLC v. United States Department of the Interior, No. 10-16519, Ninth Circuit, decided July 27, 2012, case annotation by the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, Iowa State University. The appellate ruling affirming dismissal of the easement claims.
- New Roads Into Yosemite Valley Rejected by Federal Court, Earthjustice, 2012. Summary of the Ninth Circuit's holdings on the R.S. 2477, abutting-owner, implied-easement and easement-by-necessity claims. Earthjustice represented intervening conservation groups in the case.
- Developer denied in bid to build new Yosemite access road, CBS San Francisco, August 1, 2012. Names the two roads at issue and their route to Highway 120 near Crane Flat.
- RV Park Developer Loses Yosemite Access, Woodall's Campground Magazine, 2012. The parcel's ownership and development history under Lewis Geyser, including the 300-unit plan.
- 54 U.S.C. 102901, Conveyance of freehold and leasehold interests; exchange of land, United States Code, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. The statutory text of the Park Service's exchange authority.
- Federal Land Ownership: Acquisition and Disposal Authorities, Congressional Research Service, report RL34273. The National Park Service section on disposal and exchange authority and on boundary changes.
- Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Announce Request of Proposals for Land Exchanges in Wilsonia Historic District, National Park Service, November 15, 2018. An NPS-initiated exchange under the same authority.
- Yosemite as a case study in protected area downsizing and habitat fragmentation, Mongabay, August 2016, summarizing Golden Kroner et al., Ecology and Society, 2016. The 1905 to 1937 boundary reductions.
- History of the Yosemite area, Wikipedia, accessed August 29, 2026. The 1930 Tuolumne and Merced groves purchase; figures cross-checked against the study above.
- One Hundred Years in Yosemite, chapter VI, Stagecoach Days, Carl Parcher Russell, 1947, Yosemite Online Library. The Coulterville Road's 1874 opening and Hazel Green's role as a stage stop.
- Driving Directions and Distances, National Park Service, Yosemite. Entrance-to-Valley drive times and distances.