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Yosemite embodies the long war over US national park privatization
Debate over turning public national park land into private profit dates back more than a century.
The nation has a long history of similar efforts, including a wildly unpopular 1980 attempt by Reagan administration Interior Secretary James Watt to promote development and expand private concessions in the parks. In early 1864, Central American Steamship Transit Company representative Israel Ward Raymond wrote a letter to John Conness, a U.S. senator from California, urging the government to move swiftly to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees to prevent them from falling into private hands. Five months later, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act, ceding the valley and the grove to the state of California, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation.” This was years before Yellowstone became the first federal land designated a national park in 1872.
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