Interior weighs a Yosemite strip for a private access road

The Trump administration is considering a land exchange that would hand a small parcel inside Yosemite National Park to a Nevada developer so the firm can build a private road to land it already owns just outside the western boundary. Documents submitted to Congress and reviewed by NOTUS, the New York Times and the Washington Post describe a quarter-mile strip. The Interior Department says no final decision has been made.

Kingsbarn Realty Capital bought two parcels totalling about 83 acres in early 2024 for $4 million through a limited liability company called Sanctuary at Yosemite. Chief executive Jeff Pori wants a short road from that ground onto a central Yosemite route, which would give the lots direct access toward Yosemite Valley. The firm's property sits about five miles from the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.

Federal rules require that any park land given to a private party be swapped for land of equal value. Under the proposal, Kingsbarn would buy replacement acreage near Yosemite or elsewhere in California and convey it to the National Park Service. Appraising a sliver of Yosemite is itself a hard job. The park is the fifth-most-visited in the system and was the first tract the federal government set aside for preservation, through the Yosemite Grant signed by Abraham Lincoln.

Aubrie Spady, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said claims of a secret handover were false and that there had been no political pressure to force an outcome. "If a proposal advances, the Department will follow established procedures to ensure appropriate coordination, transparency and public involvement consistent with federal law," she said.

The bid is not new. A previous owner spent years asking the Bush and Obama administrations for a private road and lost in court. The Park Service rejected the same idea again under President Joe Biden. Four people familiar with the talks told NOTUS that the current Interior political staff has been more willing to reopen the file since spring 2025. Pori donated more than $4,000 in small amounts to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, campaign finance records show.

Don Neubacher, a former Yosemite superintendent who now sits on the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, called the idea ridiculous. Conservation groups argue that national parks have spent a century adding land, not subtracting it, and that a private road would raise the value of the adjoining lots at public expense.

Yosemite already runs a reservation system in peak months because the valley floor cannot absorb unlimited cars. A new private spur would not, by itself, flood the park. It would create a class of access that other neighbouring owners do not have. That is the precedent former superintendents say they fear more than the length of the strip.

Any exchange would need an appraisal, public notice and, if it moves, a filing that Congress can see. Until those papers exist, the proposal remains a pressure campaign inside the Park Service, not a signed deed. The test is whether Interior will put a price on a quarter-mile of the first American national park so a private road can reach a 2024 land purchase.