The next wave of Yosemite overcrowding

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The next wave of Yosemite overcrowding

Behind recent news stories about a controversial land swap are plans for a major new gateway resort on the western border of America’s most traffic-stressed national park

On August 28, the online site NOTUS broke the news that officials at Yosemite National Park and the U.S. Department of the Interior had been quietly conferring for months with a private developer—Jeff Pori, the owner of Las Vegas, Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital—on a proposed land exchange with a controversial goal.

According to the initial story and others that followed, Pori has been trying to obtain a small parcel of Yosemite land— between one and two acres—in exchange for a piece of comparably valued turf somewhere else in California. He would then give this parcel to the federal government as part of what, for him, would be a very appealing deal.

With the new acreage in hand, Pori could build a 700-foot road connecting an 83-acre rectangle of park-adjacent land he owns—an old property called Hazel Green Ranch that he bought in 2024 for $9 million—to Big Oak Flat Road, one of the main feeder routes into Yosemite Valley.

Pori’s goal is to build new lodging, and anybody staying in it would enjoy a sweet shortcut: Straight-shot access to Big Oak Flat Road, roughly three miles south of the park’s Big Oak Flat Entrance, a main gateway that’s often backed up with cars trying to get into the park from California State Route 120. The value of such a boon is difficult to estimate, but it has to be high. For all practical purposes, Pori’s development would be inside the park.

In the early going, several details about Pori’s vision were unclear, including what he intended to build. He has still not released them, but all signs point to an upscale operation that’s similar in style and scope to one of the most successful of the existing gateway resorts: the Rush Creek Lodge and Spa, a 143-room, 20-acre spread positioned less than a mile from the Big Oak Flat Entrance on 120.

In the early phase of this fast-mutating story, Pori’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis—a prominent Washington, D.C., fixture who served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton during his second term—mistakenly said Pori intended to build private homes, not temporary lodging. In a fact sheet put out by Kingsbarn after that, Pori corrected the record, saying he wants to create a development done in the spirit of plans drawn up many years ago by a different owner.

“[Kingsbarn] believes the highest and best use will be a development similar to plans created by the property’s former owner which included a lodge and cabins built in a sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion,” the fact sheet said. In an interview with The Washington Post published on September 1, Pori promised that he didn’t intend to build “a private compound for rich guys.”

That may be, but the new plans can’t be mistaken for Appalachian Trail huts. The fact sheet contains an attachment labeled “Former Plan to Develop a Lodge and Cabins.” Called Hazel Green Meadows and stamped with the logo of Hansji Corporation—an investment company with a major presence in the hospitality and development industries—the site plan envisioned a 150-room hotel, parking for at least 800 vehicles, and dozens of cabins placed and spaced on winding roads.

Listed amenities included a small “Whole Foods Style” market, a gourmet restaurant, a 5,000-square-foot spa, and housing for employees, firefighters, and rangers. The target audience was described as “Higher End ‘Ahwahnee’ Traveler” and “Average Park Traveler.” If something in this same spirit were built, it would probably be the biggest development immediately west of Yosemite.

Viewed in the larger context of lodging construction in the various gateway communities outside the park, Pori’s plans—whatever they are—are bound to revive debate about whether more lodging is even needed in the area. Groups like the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center (CSERC) have argued for a long time that the lodging market, which has expanded dramatically over the past decade, is saturated—at least in terms of what Yosemite can absorb.

“The park has been at capacity for a number of years now,” says Mark Rose, the Sierra Nevada and clean air senior program manager for the NPCA. “The scary part is the possibility that there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of new lodging units built outside a park that is already past what it can handle. Meanwhile, the more you build, the more these folks—who’ve put millions of dollars into lodging—will have the expectation that the park will accommodate their visitors, no matter what.”

Davis sees it differently: He says his client is simply trying to complete a business deal, and he rejects the notion that the road access Pori is asking for is unusual, unfair, or in any way connected to favors granted by President Donald Trump.

“One thing I have not been doing is lobbying the Trump White House or doing any politics there,” Davis says, though he does acknowledge that, over the past nine months or so, “we had about a dozen Zoom calls with a lot of people from Yosemite. Yosemite, not Washington. This was all done through Yosemite officials, who aren’t exactly anti-Yosemite park or anti-environment.”

The primary goal of these discussions, Davis says, has been to figure out the legal details of the proposed swap, which he has repeatedly said will be good for the environment. Reasoning: People staying on the property wouldn’t have to drive as far to reach Yosemite. Currently, gaining access to the property at all—which is surrounded on three sides by Stanislaus National Forest—would require driving over approximately 11 miles of unpaved forestry roads.

Meanwhile, it’s still an open question whether the Park Service will be able to give Pori what he wants. As the agency acknowledged in a three-page budgetary document sent to Congress earlier this year, NPS doesn’t have legal authority to sell the land. But it could legally execute a land exchange under a provision in the U.S. Code that allows the NPS to do so if the landowner agrees to purchase property inside the park—or from another NPS unit in California—that’s of comparable value. According to the NPS budget document, such an exchange would need to “provide a demonstrable benefit to the United States.”

That phrase raises a question that still remains unanswered: How would an exchange benefiting a developer benefit the general public? Re:Public posed this to both the Interior Department and Pori—neither answered. As for when this all began, a source with knowledge of Kingsbarn’s effort says the company first approached Yosemite about obtaining an easement in 2024—during the Biden administration, which informed the company that it didn’t have the authority to grant one.

This source says that interest ramped up in Washington once Trump took office, and that most of the energy behind this idea originated with Kevin Lilly, the assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks at Interior. When Yosemite’s current superintendent, Ray McPadden, started working at the park in May of this year, it was quickly conveyed to him that working with Kingsbarn should be prioritized.

Interior’s communications office declined to address questions about the land exchange, issuing a boilerplate response saying that no such change could occur without a significant amount of administrative process. “Any land exchange or access proposal involving National Park Service lands would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations and Departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes,” the reply said. “No final decisions have been made.”

Attempts to develop the Hazel Green parcel date back more than 25 years, and they tie in with an ambitious plan to cure Yosemite’s famous traffic woes by, among other measures, developing a system of shuttle-served parking lots that would have taken most visitors to and from the park rather than letting them drive in.

This was part of the Yosemite Valley Plan, which was unveiled in 2000 by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt at a high-profile event in Los Angeles. “If the plan is adopted by park service management this year,” said a report in The Los Angeles Times, “the vast majority of visitors will leave their cars on the periphery of the park, potentially cutting traffic on the valley floor by 60%.”

Support for this idea seemed strong—that day, representatives of The Wilderness Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the NPCA were on hand alongside Babbitt to endorse it.

The Yosemite Valley Plan was never put in place, of course—it died under the weight of lengthy litigation that centered on environmental protections for the Merced River—but during those early, heady days, an investor from Solvang, California, named Lewis Geyser used the moment to try and push through a lodging development that sounds similar to what Pori is now proposing.

According to a July 28, 2000, report in The Sacramento Bee, Geyser wanted to build a $25-million, 300-unit “rustic but posh resort … where visitors will enjoy a nostalgic night in a log cottage for $300 or rough it in a tent cabin for $150.” (To adjust those numbers for 2026, double them.)

Geyser needed the same road access Pori does—though he wanted an easement rather than a swapped acre—and he tried to bargain for it with National Park Service officials. In exchange for what the Bee described as “[a] 600-foot-wide swath of Yosemite National Park,” Geyser offered to provide, at no charge, eight acres that the park service could use to build an 800-space public parking lot, key to the shuttle operation. He wanted these ideas to be incorporated into the final draft of the Yosemite Valley Plan.

Federal officials sounded interested at the time—Chip Jenkins, then the chief planner for Yosemite National Park, said the government was aiming to put a parking lot near Hazel Green anyway, at a cost of $4 million, and he described Geyser’s idea as “exactly the sort of thing our general management plan calls for: reducing lodging inside the park and building it on private land.”

The NPS never got fully on board, though, and Geyser sued in 2007, arguing that he had the right to use and develop old dirt roads from the 1800s that connected his property to the park. Geyser’s lawsuit, which was opposed by the Interior Department and conservation groups that included the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, lasted for five years; in 2012, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that he did not have the right to access the park through roads from his property.

Though Geyser’s lodge fizzled, development has by no means stopped. For several years, the NPCA has monitored resort lodging in the main gateway counties and communities northwest, west, and southwest of the park. In the relevant counties (Tuolumne, Mariposa, and Madera) and towns (primarily Groveland, Mariposa, and Oakhurst), Rose and others have used public-facing sources like websites and press releases to track the growth of Yosemite-centric lodging since 2016, a year when, he says, the current growth boom began.

Since then, lodging stock has increased by 875 units, contributing to a projected total in the three counties—existing and proposed—of between 2,136 and 2,436. (The total varies because this number includes estimates of what Pori has proposed to build.) And that’s a conservative estimate of total occupancy because, as Rose explains, the NPCA is only able to count rooms, not beds. “Some of these places are cabins, villas, or suites with multiple rooms,” he says. “So, for those 875 new units, it’s easy to say that well over a thousand vehicles would be brought into the park from them alone.”

Parking remains a Forever Problem at Yosemite, and it was all over the news this summer. Park officials introduced a reservation system in 2020 that appeared to be helping, but the Trump administration halted it in February of this year. New traffic jams ensued. Meanwhile, growth continues pretty much unchecked by local government authorities. The NPCA spreadsheet lists somewhere between 1,311 and 1,561 units that have been proposed but are in the pre-permitting or permitting phase. Whatever the total ends up being, it corresponds to a lot more cars.

One project that’s been under county review for years—and that has inspired organized local opposition—is called KOA RV Resort and Terramor Outdoor Resort. It involves two distinct developments that would exist on nearly a thousand acres of land on both sides of Highway 140, near the town of Midpines. A new 90-acre Kampgrounds of America resort would include 400 RV stalls, 25 to 40 tent sites, and assorted amenities like a swimming pool, bathhouse, and playground. The other project, Terramor, would feature an 8,000-square-foot main lodge with a restaurant, spa, and pool; 80 or more glamping sites; and a 2,000-square-foot open-air pavilion.

Citing a host of potential problems—including traffic, pollution, and damage to local habitat—locals have been fighting these plans. One additional concern they have involves wildfire. As The Guardian reported in 2024, the development would add vehicular congestion to a route that’s essential to evacuation efforts during major blazes like that year’s French Fire. “Kampgrounds of America is eyeing a plot … for a new camping and glamping development,” the report said. “Should the project move forward, up to a thousand visitors could end up spending the night on land that straddles the narrow escape route.”

A better comparison for the development Pori wants—and an obvious competitor—are the three properties owned by a company called First Light Resorts: the Rush Creek Lodge and Spa, Evergreen Lodge, and Firefall Ranch. The Rush Creek Lodge, which represents the state-of-the-art for upscale Yosemite lodging, opened in 2016 and offers 143 rooms, suites, and villas on 20 acres. It features a “Yosemite-inspired spa,” a general store, a pool, an indoor game room, and a restaurant. Rates vary, but in a busy Yosemite month like July, you can expect to pay around $540 a night.

Presumably, Pori’s planned development is on the radar at First Light, since it would represent direct competition that has a clear advantage on the access front. (First Light’s CEO, Lee Zimmenman, did not respond to an interview request from Re:Public to discuss the local lodging market.)

For now, Pori’s dream only exists on paper, and the road to it becoming reality looks bumpy. Public disapproval has been loud and nearly universal, and California politicians seem eager to see the idea go away. The Union Democrat, a newspaper based in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Sonora, reported last week that 61 of 118 members of the California state legislature oppose the land exchange.

More significantly, U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock—a pro-development, pro-Trump Republican who represents the vast district that contains Mariposa County—reportedly said last week that he doesn’t expect the land exchange to go through. “Rep. McClintock on the proposed swap,” the paper reported, citing a congressional staffer, “Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.”

But that’s just a second-hand remark, and it doesn’t count until McClintock makes it official. “Despite a reported comment by Congressman McClintock that this controversial land exchange won’t happen, I have seen nothing in the media about McClintock actually taking a position on the matter,” says John Buckley, executive director of the CSERC. “In the past he has repeatedly aligned closely with commercial interests, and he has vilified past Park Service officials who stressed the importance of protecting Park resources instead of just maximizing profits for tourist businesses.”

This story was produced by RE:PUBLIC and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.