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Inside America's most beautiful state park almost NO ONE can visit By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com Published: 12:45, 21 May 2024 | Updated: 12:45, 21 May 2024 e-mail Advertisement America's most inaccessible state park is still nearly impossible to visit more than 20 years after California bought it, because it remains surrounded by private land that nobody is willing to sell. The state spent $3million on 1,800 acres north of Sutter Buttes in 2003 with the aim of securing one of the country's most spectacular and historic landscapes.

The extinct volcanic lava field was sacred to Native Americans and played a key role in the 19th century plot to snatch California from Mexico. But every road leading to the park is privately owned, some by families which have been on the land for nearly 200 years. 'The state will buy anything that we would be willing to sell,' landowner Marty Steidlmayer told the LA Times.



'But that is the last thing my family would ever do.' Pictures of the park in the Sacramento Valley adorn the California State Parks website – immediately below a longstanding notice reading: 'The Park is currently CLOSED.' The only public access is offered by a trust which offers heavily escorted walking trips at $35 a head on ground adjoining the state parkland.

'It's absolutely beyond me why it's not open,' said Francis Coats who faced death threats when he tried to visit the 160 acres his family has owned for decades on the north side of South Butte. The area was fi.

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