Leaked Files Expose Plan To 'Sell Away' Yosemite Park Parcel for Highest-Bidding Luxury Resort Construction

Internal National Park Service documents reveal a plan to carve a quarter-mile strip out of Yosemite and hand it to a Las Vegas property firm seeking to build a private road into the park.

The proposed land exchange would give Kingsbarn Realty Capital rare direct access from an 83-acre plot it owns outside the western boundary, which the company intends to develop, in return for replacement acreage it would buy elsewhere in California and give to the Park Service, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Agency staff have been working on the arrangement since spring 2025 under pressure from political appointees at the Interior Department, according to agency documents and people directly involved.

The department says no final decision has been made, but conservationists and former officials warn that it would break 150 years of precedent at the birthplace of the national park system.

What the Internal Documents Describe

The plan was uncovered through original reporting on agency records.

NOTUS first reported the details, drawing on Park Service documents and four people directly familiar with the discussions. Officials have been examining how to cede the strip of land, or an interest in it in the form of an easement, since spring 2025.

Kingsbarn, through a limited-liability company called Sanctuary at Yosemite, bought the neighbouring property in 2024 for £2.94 million ($4 million), and its chief executive, Jeff Pori, wants a short road linking it to one of Yosemite's main thoroughfares.

The existing access route sits more than 10 miles from a park entrance, meaning guests at any hotel or resort built there would otherwise face a circuitous 90-minute drive to reach Yosemite Valley.

The value that road would unlock is the crux of the objection. A new entrance would give the property exceptionally rare private access to a park otherwise almost entirely surrounded by national forests.

'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, adding that whatever land the developer handed over in return, the ultimate value of the Hazel Green deal to Kingsbarn would be far greater.

A Request the Park Service Rejected for Two Decades

The proposal is not new, and it has been rejected before.

The land, historically known as Hazel Green Ranch, was previously owned by California developer Lewis Geyser, who spent years trying to persuade the Bush and then the Obama administrations to let him build a short private road so he could develop the site as a resort.

The courts settled the question against him.

Geyser sued in 2007 to force the issue and lost in district court, then lost again on appeal in 2012, with judges finding that he had no claim to a private road because the property already had an access route running through Forest Service land.

The government must provide an exit for private parcels enclosed by federal land, but it is not obliged to grant a new road when one already exists.

Career staff had regarded the matter as settled. Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year Park Service veteran who served about five years as Yosemite's superintendent before retiring in 2025, said the agency received an email from the new owner reopening an issue it considered long closed.

'Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,' she said.

Political Pressure and Mounting Opposition

What has changed is the posture of the department above the park.

Staff have been directed to hold meetings with Kingsbarn every few weeks and send regular progress updates to political appointees in Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's office, where they have occasionally been berated for moving too slowly, according to two people familiar with the process.

'The political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual,' said another person familiar with the discussions.

The push sits awkwardly beside the administration's public commitments. Burgum told his 2025 confirmation hearing that the national parks needed protecting 'every single inch', while in a presidential message marking National Park Week on 24 August, Trump said his administration was committed to protecting every acre of American lands.

A National Park Service spokesperson said no final decision had been made and that any exchange would be subject to environmental review and public notification.

Kingsbarn's attorney has defended the plan on the record.

Lanny Davis, the lawyer and lobbyist who once served as counsel to Bill Clinton, told NOTUS that he, rather than Trump, had taken the argument to Interior, calling it 'a pro-environmental decision' that would let residents of the private property reach the park and insisting the project is 'simply a road' that endangers no protected species.

However, opposition is hardening on Capitol Hill and beyond.

Senator Alex Padilla said projects should be chosen on merit rather than an applicant's connections to senior officials; Senator Adam Schiff vowed to fight a proposal the courts had already struck down once; and the National Parks Conservation Association called the arrangement a secretive backroom deal that would be unlawful.

The appraisal of the Yosemite land is still under way, and any completed exchange is widely expected to face an immediate legal challenge.