In rural Napa County, about 2 hours north of San Francisco, a 700-acre plot of hilly scrubland near Atlas Peak is open to the public for hunting, hiking and camping.
But the public has no legal way of getting there — unless they manage to secure permission from one of several private landowners who own an adjacent property.
A Chronicle analysis found this parcel, owned by the Bureau of Land Management, is one of the hundreds of “landlocked” pieces of public land across California. These plots are completely surrounded by private property and cut off from roads. They total at least 75,000 acres, nearly three times the size of San Francisco. Most of these plots are found in the state’s more rural counties, like Siskiyou and Kern counties, but there are also plots in Santa Clara and San Diego counties…