(Continued from Yosemite: Back Through Tioga Pass)
| Featured Photo: “O’Shaughnessy Dam and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir” Yosemite National Park, California—2023 |
Oh, how I wish we could have seen the Hetch Hetchy Valley a century ago…
(Source: wikipedia.org)
…before the Tuolumne River was dammed, and the valley floor flooded to a depth of nearly 300 feet.
(Source: wikipedia.org)
Heading to Hetch Hetchy that Monday morning in October 2023, my sister and I really did not know what to expect. In a previous post, I confessed I was intrigued by a comment in the Yosemite chapter of Fodor’s Travel Guide to the National Parks while planning our trip, which described Hetch Hetchy as “(t)he most remote, least visited part of Yosemite accessible by automobile, this glacial valley is dominated by a reservoir and veined with wilderness trails.”
In that post, I shared the photo of a beautiful Hetch Hetchy trail that I wanted to hike…
…and came across another stunning shot of the picturesque destination.
Without taking too much time for further research before our visit, I did notice the descriptions included two seemingly incongruous phrases: “the Hetch Hetchy Valley” and “the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir”. Had I explored further, I might have better understood what the conflicting terms indicated, and what we would actually see.
I believe what I learned after our trip is a story well worth telling: a cautionary tale, perhaps, of the competing interests of conservation, environmental activism, and the purpose and meaning of national parks on the one hand, and the commercial use of natural resources for economic, industrial, and urban purposes on the other. The debate over land use is still relevant today in the quest to provide the “greatest good for the greatest number of people for the longest time”.
With its modern name derived from the Miwok word hatchhatchie, meaning “edible grasses”, the Hetch Hetchy Valley had been inhabited by native Americans for more than 6,000 years. The valley was subsequently “discovered” by a European American hunter in 1850, one year before the discovery of the better-known Yosemite Valley.
John Muir first visited Hetch Hetchy in 1871 and described the beautiful gorge carved by ice and the Tuolumne River in a magazine article: “It is a Yosemite Valley in depth and in width, and is over twenty miles in length, abounding in falls and cascades, and glacial rock forms.” Muir detailed what he saw during a ten-day journey to explore the valley and concluded the article with this invitation: “Tourists who can afford the time ought to visit Hetch Hetchy on their way to or from Yosemite…it certainly is worth while riding a few miles out of a direct course to assure oneself that the world is so rich as to possess at least two Yosemites instead of one.”
But then, as now, tourists rarely made the trek to Hetch Hetchy. The more famous and far more-visited Yosemite Valley had been set aside as a state park in 1864, and a national park was established around it in 1890; Hetch Hetchy was included within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park.
Even so, as early as 1882, the rapidly growing city of San Francisco—over 150 miles away—began to look at Hetch Hetchy Valley as a potential site for a new reservoir. The legal and political wrangling over Hetch Hetchy persisted through two decades at the local and national level, as public opinion for or against a dam ebbed and flowed. Then, in 1906, San Francisco suffered a disastrous earthquake, which toppled buildings and caused fires that raged out of control; the quake also rendered the city’s water-supply system useless, due to cracked cast-iron pipes.
With this natural disaster, the battle over Hetch Hetchy began to heat up—it remained hot for the next six years—with competing claims in favor of preservation versus development. In his book, The Yosemite, published in 1912—as the climax of the fight approached—Muir presented his case to save Hetch Hetchy: “After my first visit to it in the autumn of 1871, I have always called it the ‘Tuolumne Yosemite’, for it is a wonderfully exact counterpart of the ‘Merced Yosemite’, not only in its sublime rocks and waterfalls but in the gardens, groves and meadows of its flowery park-like floor.” He then went on to compare the two magnificent valleys, feature-by-feature.
But with the fate of Hetch Hetchy hanging in the balance, Muir warned: “Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall and burying its gardens and groves one or two hundred feet deep…That anyone would try to destroy such a place seems incredible; but sad experience shows that there are people good enough and bad enough for anything.”
Among those on the other side of the fight—someone “bad enough for anything”—was James Phelan, one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco, who served three terms as the city’s mayor. Perhaps the total antithesis of Muir, Phelan never went to the mountains and had no feelings for nature. There were, in fact, several possible alternate sources outside Yosemite that could be tapped to provide water to San Francisco. But once he heard about the valley—and disregarding its location within Yosemite National Park—Phelan viewed damming the Tuolumne River to create a reservoir as a key component to his imperial dream of growing San Francisco into a city that could rival Chicago, Paris, or Rome.
The protracted deliberation over Hetch Hetchy involved no less than three U.S. presidents, the Congress, various secretaries of the Department of the Interior, the press, the Sierra Club (including Edward Taylor Parsons and John Muir), and San Francisco’s James Phelan.
After years of lobbying, debate, controversy, and even personal denigration—of promises made and promises broken—the issue was finally settled with the passage of the Raker Act in 1913, named for the California Representative who introduced the bill. The Hetch Hetchy Valley was doomed to be drowned, transforming it into a reservoir for San Francisco.
Work on the Hetch Hetchy project began in early 1914, shortly after the passage of the Raker Act. The actual groundbreaking on O’Shaughnessy Dam (named for its chief engineer) was in 1919, and the first phase of construction was completed in 1923. The final phase was completed in 1938, raising the height of the dam to 430 feet. Today, the eight-mile-long reservoir holds 117 billion gallons of clean drinking water to supply 2.7 million Bay Area residents and businesses, while two plants downstream also provide hydroelectric power. (Below is a photo of the informational sign that is posted along the O’Shaughnessy Dam, taken during our visit to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.)
There was another, unexpected outcome resulting from the creation of the reservoir at Hetch Hetchy. The nps.gov website includes an informative post written in 2013 by a Park Ranger marking the centennial of the Raker Act (which had allowed the building of the dam) eloquently reminding us “that once you have created a national park, it doesn’t mean it is protected forever.”
The Ranger continued, “The public disapproval that was generated after the bill’s passage was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the National Park Service. Within three years, Congress had passed the Organic Act formally defining the parks and creating a new federal agency, the National Park Service, with a mission (as written by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.), ‘…to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations’.”
Remember Hetch Hetchy; we had accepted Muir’s invitation, but we would not see the valley floor. It was to this remote location—this submerged valley, hidden in Yosemite National Park’s peaceful northwest corner—that my sister and I were headed on the last sight-seeing day of our trip.
And today’s Featured Photo (shown again above) would be our first close-up view of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, bottled up behind the O’Shaughnessy Dam—both of which marked their centennial in 2023, the year of our visit.
(To be continued…)
You did some thorough research to tell this story. I applaud your diligence. I learned of the Hetch Hetchy on one of our family visits to San Francisco and based on my oldest son’s recommendation, read a great book that told the story.
I was not familiar with Hetch Hetchy prior to our trip to Yosemite. I learned a lot about its history from Donald Worster’s biography of John Muir. And then I looked at several other sources to fact-check as I wrote the post. The information just kept growing and growing! I was glad to learn that what I wrote was reasonably consistent with the book you read. Next week, less story and more photos from our time at Hetch Hetchy.
A cautionary tale indeed!! Too bad countries “Remember the Maine!” to justify going to war, or remember the Holocaust to not forget atrocities done to humans, but not to remember beautiful places on this planet. There’s a controversy about the Grand Canyon that’s similar with all of the helicopter tours (noise) and the potential installment of a grand escalator (for tourists who are physically unable to hike down) at a “holy” place of confluent tributaries in the Colorado River. Your tale of Hetch Hetchy reminded me of that, and the conflict of damming up a river to supply a city versus respecting the natural beauty of a place (which doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t generate revenue as a tourist site!). Food for thought indeed. Who’s right? Who’s wrong?
Well said, Mike! I shared the same outrage as you at the “destruction” of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. But that controversy, as with many other complex issues, is rarely black and white. Who’s right or wrong? Not an easy call.
Sigh! I recall many similar controversies in India. Beautiful valleys flooded to satisfy the thirst of ever-growing cities.
When I visited the Galapagos, I wondered what damage we were doing to those biodiverse islands in the name of ecotourism.
I know you have a lifetime of experience in India, and in my own limited travel there, I also recall being struck by the push-and-pull of conservation vs. population. As you suggest with the Galapagos, it is truly a global struggle and there are few black-and-white choices. As another friend commented, “Who’s right? Who’s wrong?” Let’s hope we are making the best decisions possible. Thanks for commenting!
I, of course, think movies. “Chinatown” is essentially about creating the city of Los Angeles by blowing farmers out, forcing them to sell their land in the Owens Valley (now known as the San Fernando Valley), so they could steal their water for the growing city back in the early 20th century. I love LA, but it’s creation does have a history of shady deals. I love Dodger Stadium, but it was built in Chavez Ravine forcing many families to move from their homes and neighborhoods that had been theirs for generations! Sorry for the soapbox, but the topic and the ethical issues, are of great interest to me, especially when you’re talking about places of great natural beauty.
Important additions, Mike, to the list of controversial development projects. Again, the question of right and wrong is usually answered in shades of gray. But we should remain vigilant to similar choices between preserving and developing, so the “best” outcome is reached.
Agreed. Done preaching now, except perhaps the shrinking of the Great Barrier Reef!! (Sorry, I’ll stop now.)