A 6-year legal battle to save some of Death Valley National Park’s wilderness areas from development paid off this week. The national park (biggest in the lower 48) is in Inyo County, California. Inyo County asserted it had legal title to several dirt paths in the park under a Civil War-era federal law intended to…

County failed to prove obscure, little-used route was a ‘public highway’

County waited too long to press its claims

Order granting motion to interverne in Inyo Quiet Title Act case (06/14/07)

National Park will get support defending against county bulldozing

Congress protected the Last Chance Mountains, Greenwater Canyon, and Greenwater Valley as wilderness and added the areas to Death Valley National Park in 1994. Earthjustice intervened in support of the National Park Service to prevent Inyo County from turning little-travelled, rugged trails into maintained highways within this national park, which would disrupt the desert tortoise,…

Map of areas into which Inyo County wants to build roadways — these roadways would incroach on desert wilderness

Inyo County seeks to bulldoze highways through park wilderness