Pine Flat Road

I like to take visitors up Pine Flat Road. It's unusual scenic, the site of a famous killing, a steep, wild place to walk, etc. I saw a mountain quail there once. A patch belongs to the Audubon Society. But who owns most of the place?

According to a well-written article by Austin Murphy, a reporter for The Corporate Democrat, much of the land in the upper reaches of the road belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency. But, according to Murphy, the BLM claims that the area is owned by a mix of private people and the State of California. The county, however, states that the area is federal land. But a BLM specialist argues that the area was given to California in 1853. Maybe.