Range of Light

Proposed National ParkCalifornia
Huntington Lake in the Sierra National ForestPhotograph: U.S. Forest Service
All proposed National ParksRange of LightNo active campaign
Location
California
Current protection
Sierra National Forest; the Bureau of Land Management's San Joaquin Gorge
Status
Dormant campaign
Tier
Tier 2 · National Monument
In the book
Not featured in Undiscovered America

Why should it be a National Park?

Between Yosemite and Kings Canyon lie 1.4 million acres of the same Sierra Nevada: granite domes, giant sequoia groves, the headwaters of three major rivers, and the gorge of the San Joaquin, managed not as a park but as a working national forest with logging, mining, and grazing.

Protecting it would join the two parks into one of the longest connected wild landscapes in the lower 48, and bring the National Park experience within an hour of Fresno, a city that badly needs it. John Muir called the Sierra the Range of Light. This is the missing piece of it.

The history of National Park Campaigns

The nonprofit Unite the Parks, led by Deanna Lynn Wulff, spent more than a decade building the case for a 1.4-million-acre Range of Light National Monument, run by the National Park Service, made from all of Sierra National Forest and the San Joaquin Gorge. A bill came in 2022 and died; a push for a presidential designation followed and met fierce local opposition, and when President Biden designated two California monuments in January 2025, Range of Light was not one of them.

Distinct National Park attempts
1 (H.R. 9600, 2022, for a Park Service–run monument)
Other designation attempts
1 (2024 push for a presidential designation)

Sources

  • H.R. 9600, The Range of Light National Monument Act (117th Congress)
  • National Parks Traveler, "Legislation Calls For Range Of Light National Monument" (2022)
  • KMPH, "Biden designates two new national monuments in California, Range of Light excluded" (2025)
Know of a campaign? Tell us
  1. October 2021

    National Parks Traveler explores the campaign to move the forest to the Park Service.

  2. December 15, 2022

    Reps. Jackie Speier and Jerry McNerney introduce the Range of Light National Monument Act, H.R. 9600; it dies with the 117th Congress.

  3. July 2024

    A coalition urges Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to protect the land as a national monument.

  4. 2024

    Residents rally against it in Oakhurst, and a petition against it gathers nearly 13,000 signatures; the Chukchansi Tribe opposes it.

  5. January 2025

    Biden designates the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments; Range of Light is left out.

  6. Today

    Its backers, now Unite for Parks, describe it as their legacy work.