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Highway Robbery in California
How the Revival of an 1866 Law Threatens California's National Parks and Wilderness
 From the redwood forests to the Mojave desert, Californians have set aside some of nature’s most magnificent places as parks, monuments, and wilderness areas to be enjoyed in their natural state forever. But recently, a defunct 1866 mining law has emerged from its grave to plague California’s parks and wilderness with the threat of road-building, off-road vehicle abuse, and development.
Today, off-road vehicle groups and a handful of Western counties
are claiming that abandoned roads, jeep tracks, hiking trails, even cow-paths
and streambeds are actually “highways” across our national parks, forests, monuments,
refuges, and wilderness. They propose to take ownership of federal lands wherever
these trails exist.
In California, more than 5,500 miles of proposed RS 2477 “highways” would cut through our national parks, forests, monuments, wilderness areas, and even a state park. RS 2477 claims also threaten critical habitat for threatened species.
Six southern California counties have passed resolutions asserting RS2477 rights in general, but only one – San Bernardino County – has actually petitioned the Department of the Interior to give it ownership of specific rights-of-way, including thousands of miles of trails in national parks and in wilderness areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). By contrast, Los Angeles County and San Diego County thus far have taken a more measured approach, working cooperatively with federal land agencies to ensure access to trails under modern environmental law, without resorting to the dangerous and obsolete 1866 statute.
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Press Release
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Just three miles off of Interstate 80, 
