Where does it all end?

Editor,

If the Gazette’s Sept. 3, 2026, article is correct, the Curry family sold 40 acres of the original Hazel Green Ranch to the National Park Service almost 100 years ago. That is when the remaining, privately held, portion of the ranch lost rights to use that 40 acres. Permanently. Or maybe not?

Now a private investor wants to swap acreage somewhere else for land needed to punch a new road into Yosemite to serve their private development. If the NPS swaps equal acreage, we the people are getting screwed.

The value of a quarter-mile “driveway” to a new resort is incredible compared to the current 18-mile access road.

If a road is built from the Big Oak Flat Road/Highway 120 to Hazel Green, the public should benefit from it directly. It should be a toll road.

Tolls should be collected by, and for the benefit of, Yosemite National Park. If the park service caves to political pressure and gives the land away outright, then Mariposa County should step in and become the toll collector.

But if you believe the National Park Service’s mission statement, the road should not be built at all.

From the NPS website, their mission is: “conserving unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”

Will they scrub this language to say “make shady deals with rich investors to essentially give away public lands when nobody is looking”?

I have property in Jerseydale that would make a great 5-star resort. Will someone please tell me who to talk to so I can improve the existing dirt road directly through Yosemite to Highway 41 in Wawona?

I’m sure I could find an equal amount of land adjacent to Joshua Tree or Death Valley for $25/acre as fair trade. Where does this end? Are we going to have private driveways punched into our national parks from every privately held parcel that abuts them?

If not, then what is special about this proposal that it should turn back the clock to before 1938, when the land was sold to the park?

Thor Matteson
Jerseydale