In October 2006, Inyo County filed suit under the Quiet Title Act seeking to build roads and establish highway right-of-ways through wilderness areas of Death Valley National Park, using a long-repealed Civil War era law known as R.S. 2477. Earthjustice and conservation groups intervened to defend the park lands -- which include important ancient rock art sites and habitat for desert bighorn sheep and threatened desert tortoise -- from the damaging impacts of road building.

In August 2008, a federal judge ruled that Inyo County waited too long to file suit, and dismissed the county's claims to all of one route and most of the other two routes.