Posted on 08/28/2026 3:09:10 PM PDT by Libloather
For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.
National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.
The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.
(Excerpt) Read more at notus.org ...
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Why not sell plots in the volcanic caldera to the Chinese?
This is stupid. Even if it’s a short 1/4 road.
I remember being annoyed by all of the giant RVs clogging the roads at the Grand Canyon years ago. Parks need to have that crap outside the park or at least limited to certain areas. If people want to see the sites up close, Parks should have families rent a golf cart to see the sites.
I paying for these Parks. I don’t want to sit behind a Prevost on a 2-lane road going 10mph with the left blinker on and having no idea where to go.
Exchange of federal land for private land the government wants elsewhere is not new.
It is often done and usually makes the federal boundaries smoother.
83 acres is not much. The article does not say how much the federal government gets in the exchange. It might be two or three times as many acres.
To distract from the project to develop a certain big tourist attraction in Arizona as
The Trump Grand Canyon: A Barron Trump Development Zone.
Fixed. Getting roads to sequoia stands will help us get out the white fir that has invaded them because of over a century of fire suppression. Fire in that fir would kill not a few of those ancient trees.
It only takes a cambium temperature of 140 degrees F for ten minutes or so to kill a tree. THAT is the reason for the thick bark on Sequoiadendron giganteum. Unlike coast redwood, sequoias do not sprout epicormic buds after fire and are therefore much more subject to injury pursuant to a crown fire.
As opposed to loudly working on it? Give me a break. He could give the whole park away and nobody would care.
There is "clueless", and then there is profoundly clueless.
Good idea but you have to SECRETLY tell them that the caldera has GOLD or JADE. HAS to be secretly and they must PROMISE not to spread that secret.
Guaranteed to sucker them them into it.
I’m surprised he hasn’t turned El Capitan into the “Donald J. Trump Bungee Jumping, Zip Line and Water Park”.
83 acres. The park is 1,187 square miles. There are 640 acres in a square mile.
Unless you are that person who wants to buy that land or President Trump himself, there is nobody that’s going to like that idea of Trump selling off some of Yosemite Nation Park. That will be a legacy burner.
I don’t believe it’s lawful for any POTUS to sell federal lands. Congress has the authority over selling Federal land. And why should someone rich dude get to put in a private road into Yosemite?
If you read to the end, you’ll see Clinton operative Lanny Davis is the prime mover, I doubt Trump even knows about it and everything above the last line points strongly toward 5 pinnochios
“”I’m surprised he hasn’t turned El Capitan into the “Donald J. Trump Bungee Jumping, Zip Line and Water Park”.””
Just wait......
I agree with that....
““It wasn’t Donald Trump; it was me, liberal Democrat Lanny Davis, former counsel to President Clinton, went to the Department of Interior, and we made the argument that this is a pro-environmental decision to allow this road to be directly built to allow the residents of this privately owned property to gain entrance or exit to the park,”” Davis said.
Thanks for your tip...pays to read...I don’t understand the reference to “residents of this privately owned property”.
What residents? They haven’t proved that there are any residents who need an entrance or exit to the park.
The park does not need any changes. There is more than one way to enter the park - from the west (Modesto) AND the eastern side over the mountains. The eastern side is trickier and probably the more traveled. We have entered from the west and left to the east into Lee Vining.
Leave it alone...
I’d vote NO...
Bad...Bad...Bad optics...
You’re welcome, I agree with you, though I haven’t been there for over 50 years. At the time, I much preferred Lassen, though I was never a back country traveller, for want of a better word.
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