Fox News called Blues Beach a “giveaway” to tribes — the deed says the opposite

MENDOCINO CO., 7/18/26 — For two weeks a national audience has been told that Gavin Newsom gave away a stretch of the Mendocino coast south of Westport. Fox News framed it as a “Newsom-backed” state commission handing over “popular coastline” to Native Americans. Legal Insurrection called it a deal that transfers an “iconic California beach.” The comment sections did the rest.

The paperwork that transferred a Caltrans-owned beach to a native-led nonprofit tells a different story, and it’s been sitting at the county recorder’s office on Low Gap Road in Ukiah since Monday, July 6. That’s the day the deed was recorded to a nonprofit called Kai Poma.

Read the law that authorized that deed and the coastal permit that cleared it, and the giveaway runs the other direction. Your right to walk on Blues Beach is now written into state law. Charging you to set foot on it is illegal — not frowned on, illegal. And the state kept a key to the door.

Here’s what the record says.

Can I still go to Blues Beach?

Yes. Free, and not as a courtesy.

Streets and Highways Code section 118.9 — the statute behind the transfer — says the nonprofit “shall allow public access to the Blues Beach property.” That’s a requirement in the law, not a line in a press release.

Can they charge me?

No. The statute bars the owner from charging “monetary fees to access the property.” It also bars commercial or retail development, gaming, subdividing the land and handing it to anyone else without Caltrans’ approval.

The Fox version of this story, where somebody monetizes a public beach, is the one thing the law makes impossible.

Why did Caltrans own a beach?

Because of a highway project that wanted a view.

The state took the land in the 1960s to build Highway 1 and give travelers a scenic view of the bluffs and the ocean. The Coastal Commission’s report doesn’t tidy up how it got to the sellers: Native people were displaced “in favor of the privatization of the land into the hands of migrant settlers,” and in the 1960s those settlers profited by selling to the state.

Handing it back took an act of the Legislature. SB 231, authored by state Sen. Mike McGuire, which took effect Jan. 1, 2022. That bill gave Caltrans something it hadn’t had — the authority to transfer the property at no cost.

What actually changes?

The beach closes from sunset to sunrise. That one is real, and it’s in the statute — the owner “shall restrict public access from sunset to sunrise.” The Legislature’s stated reason is that the place is remote and what’s out there is fragile.

That closure doesn’t apply to Native American cultural activities, which the law spells out to include harvesting native plants and fishing. Kai Poma’s management plan covers  its three constituent tribes: Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Round Valley, Indian Tribes, Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians.

Past that, the plan’s first phase changes nothing. All three ways to get there stay open: the access road down Chadbourne Gulch, the Caltrans pullout and the paved trails at the Bruhel Point vista point. The plan says it plainly — apart from emergency work, “no other changes to public access will be made and no other development will occur.”

Can I still drive onto the sand?

The Coastal Commission’s staff report treats driving onto the beach as unauthorized, and it doesn’t soften what’s been happening. On summer weekends the access road is “fully lined with cars parked informally on both sides, with additional cars along the beach itself.” When the road jams, people have been seen driving through Chadbourne Creek or over vegetated slopes to get around it. They camp on the sand and hold parties. Some of it has pulled in emergency responders. Caltrans cultural resources staff and the tribes have observed looting and theft of cultural material.

Caltrans has spent years hauling boulders and K-rail out there to stop it. The public kept moving the barriers.

Vehicle access here has been restricted since long before the deed recorded. It’s the $110 million emergency project holding Highway 1 out of the ocean, running since March 2024. Caltrans restricts parking to the designated area at the entrance of Blues Beach Road, with foot access over the path and footbridge.

Did California give away a public beach?

The state gave away the land. It kept the public’s access to it, and it wrote in a trap door.

If Kai Poma fails to maintain the property the way the law requires, or if it ceases to exist, the land “shall automatically revert to the department” — back to Caltrans, and the cost of taking it back doesn’t fall on the department.

The Coastal Commission added a second lock. Its permit conditions are perpetual and bind every future owner. The deed had to carry a restriction limiting the land to public access, natural habitat and protection of cultural resources.

None of that applied when the state owned it outright.

What is Kai Poma?

This is where the loose language in the Fox coverage matters.

Kai Poma is a nonprofit, not a tribal government. The land did not go into federal trust. No sovereignty attaches to it. It can revert. Stewardship is the word the Coastal Commission’s own report reaches for, calling the deal “an important return of coastal land to Native American stewardship,” and the word is doing real work. Stewardship is not sovereignty, and the difference is the whole architecture of the deal.

The nonprofit is governed by members of three federally recognized tribes: the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. The management plan describes it as a 501(c)(3) “incorporated under the laws of the Hoopa Valley Tribe” — a Humboldt County tribe, and not one of the three.

Kai Poma’s chairman, Eddie Knight, described what the land means. “Ancestral lands hold profound importance to California Indian communities,” he said in a statement issued through the governor’s office on July 10. “The legacy of forced relocation continues to affect tribal families, and the protection of homelands remains essential for cultural continuity.”

Preserving and restoring the beach, Knight said, “supports ongoing tribal practices such as harvesting food, harvesting medicine, and safeguarding sites of historical and spiritual significance.” The nonprofit, he said, “looks forward to restoring and protecting Blues Beach for future generations.”

Right next to the transferred land, Caltrans is almost done fixing Highway 1. A landslide had damaged the road south of Westport, and crews spent months making it safe.

The biggest job finished in March. Workers hauled in 190,000 tons of rock to build a wall along the shore that holds back the ocean and keeps the road from washing away. They also anchored the road foundation and added drains to pull water out of the ground. The whole project cost $110 million, paid for by a state emergency road fund.

One thing is left: repaving the stretch of Highway 1 down by the beach, from the Blues Beach Trailhead to the Overlook. Manny Machado, a spokesperson for Caltrans, said that should be done by late August. Once it is, the temporary traffic light comes out and the road opens back up to two lanes.

What about the landslide?

Caltrans kept it. The state divided 172 acres and handed over 136, holding back the northernmost parcel because the bluff there is unstable and keeps shoving Highway 1 around. The tribes did not inherit that problem.

Caltrans also kept an easement over the beach access road so it can reach the beach north of the property when it needs to work on the highway. The bluffs will continue to crumble.

A Newsom statement a few days after the deed was registered said  the transfer “restores a sacred cultural connection between Native peoples and their ancestral homelands in the north state,” Newsom s The coastline, he said, “will once again be managed under the rightful stewardship of local tribes.”

What changed hands is a beach that three tribes’ nonprofit now has to keep open to you, for free, sunrise to sunset, in perpetuity — or lose it to the state.

That’s the giveaway.