Assemblyman Josh Hoover

There are some places in California that belong to all of us. Yosemite is one of them. 

More than 160 years ago, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act of 1864. That law transferred Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias to California for public use, recreation and preservation. Among its most important provisions was a simple but powerful promise: the land would be “inalienable for all time.” That promise is worth remembering now. 

Unfortunately, a proposed land exchange at Yosemite National Park would give a private developer access across federal park land to connect an adjacent property to a road inside the park. Kingsbarn Realty Capital owns an 83-acre parcel outside Yosemite’s western boundary and is seeking that access to facilitate development. The Department of the Interior has said no final decision has been made and that any exchange would have to comply with federal law and environmental review. Those assurances do not settle the larger question: whether Yosemite land should be on the table at all. 

I do not believe it should. Earlier this month 61 members of the California Legislature — more than half of the state’s 118 lawmakers — sent a bipartisan letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum urging him to halt and reject the proposal. I was proud to sign it. Our message was straightforward: Yosemite belongs to no one and to everyone. It is held in trust for generations yet to come and this deal would break that promise. 

The idea is not new. A previous owner sought private road access through park land beginning in the 2000s. The National Park Service refused. The owner sued. In 2012, a federal appeals court upheld the rejection. That should have ended the matter. Instead, after the current developer purchased the adjacent parcels in 2024, the same underlying request returned — not through the courts this time, but through a land exchange negotiated with federal officials. 

We are also concerned by reports that the Department has considered using the Land and Water Conservation Fund in connection with the exchange. That fund exists to acquire and protect public land, not to underwrite its handoff to a private developer. Earlier this year, the Legislature adopted AJR 9 urging full funding and staffing for the National Park Service and opposing the transfer of federal park lands. We write in that same spirit. 

The existence of a land-exchange mechanism does not make this appropriate use of it. Protecting Yosemite requires no creative reading of federal law. It requires the judgment to say no. 

Californians disagree on many things. Protecting the places that belong to all Americans should not be one of them. Our national parks are not ordinary parcels of government property. They are part of the nation’s heritage. When Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, he was not thinking about the next news cycle. He was thinking about a future he would never see. It is now our responsibility to protect Yosemite for future generations.

Assemblyman Josh Hoover represents the 7th Assembly District in Sacramento County, which includes the cities of Citrus Heights, Folsom, and Rancho Cordova and the unincorporated communities of Carmichael, Fair Oaks, Foothill Farms, Gold River, Mather, McClellan Park, North Highlands, Orangevale and Rosemont. You can follow him on X @joshua_hoover or contact his office at [email protected].