In the 1850s, miners, settlers and soldiers violently drove them out of the Yosemite area during the Gold Rush.

Now, 175 years later, the Southern Sierra Miwuks’ descendants have begun to reclaim some of the land.

Last week, the tribe, based in Mariposa, California, closed a deal to purchase 896 acres of scenic forests and steep outcroppings along Yosemite National Park’s western border. Sold by the Pacific Forest Trust, an environmental group based in San Francisco, the landscape near the intersection of Wawona and Glacier Point roads includes groves of incense cedar, white fir and sugar pine trees, with breathtaking views from Henness Ridge across the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Merced River.

“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. “It will be a sanctuary for our people.”

The deal is the latest example of a growing trend in California: tribes working with environmental groups and state agencies to recover lands lost generations ago, sometimes acquiring their first territory since the 18th or 19th centuries.

Funding for the $2.4 million sale was provided to the tribe by the California Natural Resources Agency as part of a state program that helps tribes acquire land.

The previous owner, the Pacific Forest Trust, purchased most of the land in 2004 from a family that had owned it since 1925. The property, which only has one house on it, was zoned for up to 19 ranchettes. Logged for decades, it was intended to expand Yosemite National Park to the original boundaries that conservation pioneer John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, had proposed in the 1880s when he advocated for Congress to first establish the park.

The expansion of the park by adding the property was supported by the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors, the superintendent of Yosemite, and other leaders.

But the land never became part of Yosemite National Park. The transfer was blocked by U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-El Dorado Hills. McClintock said at the time that he didn’t trust the National Park Service to be a good steward. McClintock’s district includes broad expanses of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park.

McClintock is one of a number of conservative Western Republicans who for years opposed nearly every effort to expand federal land holdings in the West, preferring it be held in private ownership for cattle ranching, logging, mining and other uses.

“When is enough enough?” he said in a speech on the House floor in 2009. “The public good is not served by the mindless and endless acquisition of property at the expense of the sustainable use of our natural resources, responsible stewardship of our public lands and the freedom and property rights of our citizens.”

Asked in 2014 about the property, McClintock said: “There is considerable resistance in the House and in my district to the acquisition of additional federal land without clear assurances that it will be properly managed and that public access and recreation will be guaranteed.”

Parts of the property burned in the 2018 Ferguson Fire. The Pacific Forest Trust replanted 125,000 native trees to help restore it, and began conversations on a potential sale with the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, which has about 650 members and a presence in the Yosemite area dating back thousands of years.

“It was a compelling opportunity to provide land to the tribe and provide the park a good neighbor and steward,” said Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust. “It underpins a cultural revival in concert with the land. In the end, it’s an even more fitting outcome.”

Under the deal, the state retained a deed restriction that prohibits development on the land and language that calls for continued restoration of the property with projects such as controlled burns.

“We will be able to harvest and cultivate our traditional foods, fibers and medicines and steward the land using traditional ecological knowledge,” said Tara Fouch-Moore, the Miwuks’ tribal secretary.

As the tribe’s private property, the land will not be open to the general public unless the tribe decides to allow it. Under the conditions of the state grant, tribes receiving funding for land purchases are required to offer some public access.

Since its founding in 1993, the Pacific Forest Trust has preserved more than 300,000 acres in California, Oregon and Washington.

Wayburn, the group’s co-founder, is the daughter of Edgar Wayburn, the former five-time national president of the Sierra Club who helped lead efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to establish the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, enlarge Redwood National Park and pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed in 1980. That law doubled the size of America’s national park system, expanded Denali, Katmai and Glacier Bay national parks, and established vast new national parks including Wrangell-St. Elias, Gates of the Arctic and Kenai Fjords. Edgar Wayburn was close friends with photographer Ansel Adams, whose black-and-white photos of Yosemite rank among its most iconic images.

Even though her organization held the Yosemite-area property for 20 years through many ups and downs, Laurie Wayburn described the final result as very rewarding.

“It’s a joyous moment,” she said. “This is a wonderful outcome for the land and the people.”

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