Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) out of the highway stop known as Tracy in Northern California, has written legislation that would sell 15 National Park properties in order to raise funds. He says this plan was just a "conversation starter" intended to encourage opening up ANWR, and that he has no intention of introducing the legislation.

Nevertheless, the idea that someone would come up with an idea like this illustrates the depth to which many Republican leaders have sunk.

...Pombo's spokesman said the proposal, written by Pombo's House Resources Committee staff, is intended only to influence lawmakers to support an item in the budget bill that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

If drilling continues to be banned in the refuge, Pombo's staff argued, the government would have to sell parks as well as advertising space on park buses, trams and ferries to reach the level of revenues expected from oil leases sales in the Alaskan refuge.

...The draft legislation also calls for the sale of several huge nature preserves in Alaska -- including the Lake Clark National Park and the Yukon-Charley Rivers Preserve -- and for commercial development of Theodore Roosevelt Island, a 91-acre wooded island of nature trails in the middle of the Potomac River in Washington. The National Parks Conservation Association estimated that the draft legislation would affect 23 percent of the National Park Service's land...

I never knew about that Island; I wish I'd visited it when I was there. Not all of the properties are National Parks, some are more minor features. Unfortunately, I've only been to one of them, the one that's linked below. And, that one requires you to hike in two miles to visit it (there's a road with restricted access):

Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Alaska
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska
Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Alaska
Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska
Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Alaska
Noatak National Preserve, Alaska
Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska
Eugene O'Neill National Historical Site, California
Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Arizona
Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, Texas
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historical Site, Massachusetts
Mary McCleod Bethune Council House, Washington, D.C.
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, South Dakota
Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, Pennsylvania
Thomas Stone National Historical Site, Maryland