The headwaters basin of the North Fork of the American River, a roughly 20,000 acre valley high in California's Sierra Nevada, reveals a case study of maintaining access to public lands in an area where a mixture of public and private ownership overlays the landscape. For those who seek to visit the area, navigating the web of public and private lands, public easements and navigable waterways presents a significant problem, as a rather contentious situation exists between private land ownership groups and the general public. There are ongoing efforts by owners in the area to prevent public use of trails whose existence pre-dates current ownership and probably pre-dates Anglo exploration of the area by a wide margin. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that these trails are at the bottom of a steep and rugged river canyon and, as such, no practical alternative exists for accessing the public lands both above and below the contested area. Through visitation of the area, interviews of relevant parties, and archival research, a clearer picture of the situation will be attained. At stake are not just recreational opportunities, but the right of the public to maintain historical use of travel corridors and access to publicly held land in spite of exclusionary practices by private landholders.