Yosemite-Adjacent Land Sold to Native American Tribe

Nearly 900 acres of land near Yosemite National Park is coming back under the control of its original inhabitants.

Last week, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation closed a deal to purchase 896 acres of forests along the western border of Yosemite National Park, the Mercury News reported. The San Francisco-based environmental group Pacific Forest Trust sold the land for $2.4 million, or $2,678 per acre.

The Mariposa-based tribe purchased it using funding from the California Natural Resources Agency, which has a program to help tribes acquire land.

The property has one house on it and was previously zoned for up to 19 ranchettes.

The Pacific Forest Trust bought most of the land in 2004 from a family that had owned it since 1925.

The trust intended to expand Yosemite National Park to the original boundaries proposed by John Muir in the 1880s. That proposed expansion was supported by the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors and the superintendent of Yosemite.

Located near the intersection of Wawona and Glacier Point Roads, the acreage is packed with cedar, white fir and sugar pine trees with views across the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Merced River.

The Southern Sierra Miwuks were driven out of the area in the 1850s as soldiers, settlers and miners moved into the Yosemite area during the Gold Rush. The Ferguson Fire in 2018 charred parts of the property; the Pacific Forest Trust replanted 125,000 native trees to help restore it and began discussing a potential sale with the Southern Sierra Miwuk.

“Having this significant piece of our ancestral Yosemite land back will bring our community together to celebrate tradition and provide a healing place for our children and grandchildren,” said Sandra Chapman, tribal council chairwoman of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. The land will be used as “a sanctuary for our people,” she said.

It’s the latest land transfer deal in California as more Native American tribes work in tandem with environmental groups and state agencies to recover land that was once theirs. In May, the state completed the largest-ever transfer of land to a Native American tribe in California history when the Yurok Tribe, using $56 million in funds raised from public and private sources, acquired a 47,100-acre parcel of land along the lower Klamath River, including the Blue Creek watershed.

— Chris Malone Méndez