Surely this report ruffled the feathers ofWilliarn Bourn, chairman of the board of the Spring Valley Water Company. The committee gave no explanation of the "special fire-protection system" and seemed not to admit that breaks in the water mains were inevitable. The real miracle was that Hermann Schussler's Crystal Springs Dam, located directly on the San Andreas fault, withstood the shake with no damage. If the darn had broken, the failure would have caused more deaths, and the city would have suffered with little water for many months.
In spite of the engineering soundness of the Spring Valley system, it was inevitable that "The Great Earthquake and Fire" would give added momen- tuYn for the city to acquire a municipal system. Most residents would agree with one engineer who wrote Robert Underwood Johnson that "our late earthquake and fire has opened the eyes to the fact that we have the poorest water-system of any city in the United States.."31 Of course, the water supply committee, under the guise of objectivity, favored municipal ownership and was not hesitant to use the earthquake and fire to further its purpose. With the catalyst of the great fire, the city and Spring Valley once again began the dance of acquisition, and the city-once again-turned its eyes east to the great Hetch Hetchy Valley. Appearing before the supervisors in April 19o8, A. H. Payton, president of Spring Valley, responded to the city's need for five million more gallons daily. The city had two choices: buy the system for $32 million ("the best terms available") or let the company do the job through expansion, particularly in Alameda County and the Calaveras dam site.32
In the meantime the San Francisco earthquake and fire created national sympathy for the prostrate city. Offers of assistance from individuals, cities, and governments appeared daily, in a lavish display of generosity. Soon enough this compassion for San Francisco would play out in the halls of Congress. Who could, after all, deny the struggling metropolis its desired water supply on hearing Key Pittman's emotional appeal to his fellow senators?
I happened to be in the City of San Francisco in 19o6 when that great catastrophe came. I was there when the earth was shaken by that terrible quake. I saw the fire break out all over that city and sweep from one end of it to another. I saw homes crumble and swept away as the wind might blow a stack of cards. I saw women with children at their breasts filling those parks.
I saw the hillside covered by homeless people. I saw such suffering as I never expect to see again, and I know that a lot of it was caused by reason of the inefficient system of water that was being supplied to the people of San Francisco. I know it was largely due to the greed of that water monopoly in its efforts to spend as little as possible and to grasp just as much as possible, and I never want to see such a condition again exist in any city.33
Although Pittman's description was overdrawn, City Engineer Marsden Manson knew that the time was right to reintroduce the Hetch Hetchy idea. He looked to U.S. Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot for help. Both had been dismayed when Secretary Hitchcock refused to give San Francisco Lake Eleanor and the Hetch HetchyValley. Manson wrote Pinchot soliciting his help. Pinchot responded, noting that he was pleased to hear that the earthquake "had damaged neither your activity nor courage." In regard to water, the politically powerful forester sincerely hoped that the city would "be able to make provision for a water supply from the Yosemite National Park, which will be equal to any in the world. I will stand ready to render any assistance which lies in my power." Naturally, Manson was thrilled that the city had a vigorous voice in Washington. In November 19o6 Secretary Hitchcock, Manson and Lane's nemesis, departed from the Interior Department. His replacement happened to be a good friend of Pinchot. With a somewhat transparent meaning, Pinchot wrote Manson that Hitchcock's successor, James Garfield, might be more amenable to their plan for the Hetch Hetchy region. He could not forecast the actions of the new secretary, but "my advice to you is to assume that his attitude will be favorable, and to make the necessary preparations to set the case before him." Pinchot had heard rumors that San Francisco had given up on the "Lake Eleanor plan" and decided to go elsewhere for Sierra water. However, if the Hetch Hetchy idea was still open, he wrote, "by all means go ahead with the idea of getting it "34
With such encouragement Manson, Phelan, and the Board of Supervisors resurrected the moribund Hetch Hetchy plan. In July 1907 Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield traveled to San Francisco, and Mayor Edward Taylor arranged a meeting to push reconsideration of Hetch Hetchy. He then appointed Manson and Phelan to present the San Francisco case. Taylor realized that the two were the best informed and that they, in the words of Phelan's biographers, "offered the best blend of technical understanding, humanistic sensitivity, and political aplomb."35 They met on the evening of July 24. In addition to the San Francisco spokespersons, P. J. Hazen and A. C. Boyle represented the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts. The meeting focused on irrigation rights, and Manson promised that the two districts' senior water rights would be fully protected. Garfield said little.36 Yet the San Francisco delegation successfully planted an idea that would be amplified, resulting in the Garfield grant of May 19o8. This important grant authorized the city to proceed with its Hetch Hetchy plans.
No Sierra Club members were present at Garfield's July 1907 evening meeting. However, the gathering did signal San Francisco's intentions, and it acted as a catalyst for Muir and the club. Certainly the club knew of the city's interest, but until the middle of 1907 there were no protest resolutions, and club member's concerns were voiced in private. The 1903 Hitchcock decision seemed to foster a false sense of security. The club forgot that what one secretary of the interior could give, another could take away. Muir and others believed they could depend on the government to protect its national park. We have no record of the conversations between Roosevelt and Muir from their memorable four-day outing in 1903, but the two could not stay away from politics for long. No doubt Roosevelt expressed sympathy for the preservation of Hetch Hetchy, and Muir would have taken such sympathy as a declaration for the valley. At the time, the club was tiny, and devoted to convincing the California legislature to rescind Yosemite Valley to the federal government, and the U.S. Congress, in turn, to accept its lost possession. Convincing two separate jurisdictional bodies was not easy, and the effort consumed the energies of what was essentially a Bay Area club. Exhausted by its successful 1905 effort to return Yosemite Valley to federal control, the club seemed passive in the face of a threatening storm over Hetch Hetchy.
But now the city's renewed activity provided that "firebell in the night" for Muir and William Colby, the industrious young secretary of the Sierra Club. John Muir used his renown to inform such clubs as the Mazamas, the Appalachian Club, and walking clubs in Chicago of the city's designs on the deep, spectacular valley. He also wrote Theodore Roosevelt. The naturalist expressed his concern that Yosemite Park be saved from commercialism "other than the roads, hotels, etc. required to make its wonders and blessings available." He was, of course, most concerned with Hetch Hetchy. He ranted against such men as Phelan and Manson, stating that their arguments "all show forth the proud sort of confidence that comes of a good sound substantial irrefragable ignorance." Ever since Congress established Yosemite Park, its friends had had to defend it. What could be done? He hoped that president could help. In his appeal, Muir unveiled a striking analogy. "The first forest reserve was in Eden," he reminded the president, "and though its boundaries were drawn by the Lord, and angels sent to guard it, even the most moderate reservation was attacked." The president responded from his Oyster Bay home, stating that he would do all in his power to protect Hetch Hetchy, but "so far everyone has been for it and I have been in the disagreeable position of seeming to interfere with the development of the State [of California] for the sake of keeping a valley, which apparently hardly anyone wanted to have kept, under national control." Roosevelt ended his letter in a reminiscent mood, wishing that he could see Muir in person, and lamenting that he was not again with him "camping out under the great sequoias, or in the snow unde
r the silver firs!"37
Embedded in the president's words was a message. Muir must build a constituency if he was to have any success with the San Francisco juggernaut.To do so would require more than a local effort. To rally national interest, Muir called on his old friend Robert Underwood Johnson. He and Colby also appealed to J. Horace McFarland, a great friend of the national parks and executive director of the American Civic Association. Both men would play crucial roles in the coming fight.
McFarland was no newcomer to battling engineers intent on progress at the expense of scenery. Niagara Falls, the greatest natural wonder in the eastern United States, had been under attack for many years. Frederick Law Olmsted had deplored the tacky commercialism that seemed to sprout up overnight, knowing that such intrusions detracted from the fall's picturesque and sublime beauty.38 At the turn of the century, McFarland faced a more aggressive and skilled enemy: professional civil and electrical engineers who looked on the falling water with covetous eyes. These "scientific wizards" were the heroes of the day who, with the general support of the American people, were intent on absolute control of natural resources for what they saw as the advancement of civilization. With the nation in the midst of an energy revolution, such electrical engineers as Charles Proteus Steinmetz seemed larger than life. Steinmetz, in an article entitled "Mobilizing Niagara to Aid Civilization," suggested that it was time to harness the immense potential of the falls through diversion and hydropower development. For those such as McFarland who were profoundly concerned with the loss of a scenic attraction and tourism, Steinmetz had a bizarre solution. Why not let the falls "run dry" during the week and then "turn them back on" for the tourists on the weekend?39
At the time Muir and Colby first contacted McFarland, he was in the thick of his struggle to save Niagara Falls. Fortunately he found allies in Lord James Bryce, the British ambassador to the United States and author of the classic work The American Commonwealth, and Theodore Burton, chairman of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors. The Burton bill, which became law in June 1906, combined with an international treaty signed in 1909 by Bryce for Canada and Secretary of State Elihu Root, ensured that Niagara's waters would flow for people's appreciation, not for their factories.411
McFarland found many similarities between his fight for Niagara and what was developing on the West Coast. He would become an indefatigable ally of the Hetch Hetchy Valley: a man who, like Robert Underwood Johnson, had the ear of prominent senators and even presidents. He often operated out of the Cosmos Club, founded by John Wesley Powell in 1878 and boasting such members as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and many men of science and power. The club was, as Wallace Stegner has written, "the closest thing to a social headquarters for Washington's intellectual elite."41 From such a gathering place McFarland could reach an audience unavailable elsewhere. His biographer suggested, however, that his dedication to Hetch Hetchy may have been inspired not by the refinements of the Cosmos Club but by a sign from nature. At his home in Pennsylvania a noisy woodpecker would wake him every night at 3:20 A.m. Rather than a mere annoyance, the flicker was, in McFarland's view, "trying to sound an alarm; to rouse him from his reveries of building his garden to the real dangers threatening the one God had made centuries before in California's Yosemite."42 McFarland responded.
The Sierra Club took its first formal action on August 30, 1907, when the board passed a lengthy resolution opposing the use of Hetch Hetchy as a reservoir site. The resolution stressed the beauty of the valley, its tourist potential once the government constructed a road, the inviolate nature of a national park, and the fact that San Francisco could find pure and abundant water elsewhere.43 A few months later a letter signed by Muir, Colby, Joseph N. LeConte, William Bade, and E. T. Parsons, all club leaders, urged the membership to write President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Garfield.44
WITH THE CLUB and his friends alerted to the danger, in the fall of 1907 John Muir's thoughts turned often to the Hetch Hetchy. Twelve years had passed since he was last in the valley. It was time to reacquaint himself with the object of his interests; its sheer granite cliffs, lush meadows, and particularly the deep-running Tuolumne River. Tueeulala Falls would be nearly dry andWapama Falls greatly diminished, but the river would cast its spell on the mountaineer. He rejoiced in its running water. Hal Criminel, writing about Muir in Alaska, remarked that "water simply enchanted Muir his entire life."45 When camped along the Tuolumne River, he remarked once that "for my part, I should like to stay here all winter or all my life or even all eternity."46 Perhaps it was the auditory factor, transforming itself from a deafening roar in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and Rancheria Creek, to the murmuring, gurgling hush as it flowed through the valley. The river, with its slow pace and multitude of currents, put Muir in a reflective mood. Here was a river that had its beginning high in his mountains and its ending at sea: one a birthing, the other closure, or death.Yet he knew the river was immortal. He could count on the Tuolumne to flow, continuing to charts its course, as well as his. A reservoir, of course, would bring premature death to a river.
The chance to revisit Hetch Hetchy with a cherished friend was an opportunity not to be missed. William Keith accompanied hitn.An artist by nature and a Scotsman by birth, Keith met Muir in 1872 in Yosemite. The two found much in common, not only in their backgrounds but in their interests as well. Although Keith was basically apolitical, he found in the mountains the subject of a lifetime of work. The two were born in the same year, and they both "inherited the love of nature implicit in the Gaelic tempera- ment."47 They spent many days together in the mountains, and Muir would often visit Keith in his San Francisco studio. A visit with Keith could make the city tolerable. There was no one Muir would rather have accompany him on his revisit to the Hetch Hetchy. Valley. In early October Muir wrote his friend, "I'm glad you have decided to take a breath of mountain air. It's what we both need.."48
At 69, neither man was as vigorous as he once was. They rented horses, and at Croker's Station they hired a man to look after the stock. Even before they left, Muir exulted in being back in the mountains. He could appreciate any of nature's seasons, but fall suited him. In a letter Muir penned to his daughter, he exclaimed that "the glory of the woods hereabouts is now in the color of the flowering dogwood-glorious masses of red & purple & yellow beneath the pines & firs." To Colby he wrote that "Keith is enjoying himself in this bracing air, and I hope to get rid of my cough in blessed and bothersome Hetch Hetchy."49
The next day they arrived in the "blessed and bothersome" valley. We have little detail of their stay, but undoubtedly they wandered about the valley, Keith with his easel and Muir with his notebook. In the shorter October days, they would have conversed at length around a comforting campfire. Of course when it came to Hetch Hetchy Valley, Muir always had a political agenda. Later he wrote his Los Angeles friend Theodore Lukens, who had spent time with Muir in Hetch Hetchy in 1895, that "Keith and I returned from a two week visit to Hetch Hetchy a short time ago. Keith was charmed with it-said it was finer & more beautiful & picturesque than Yosemite [Valley]. He made 38 sketches." To Land of Sunshine magazine editor Charles Lum mis, another Los Angeles friend, he briefly described the trip and then added: "If successful in getting large enough appropriations for a good wagon road into the Valley & a trail up the big Tuolumne canon the salvation of the glorious Hetch Hetchy will be made sure for then it will be seen & known by countless thousands making effective lying [by San Francisco] im- possible."so With his call for development, Muir, contrary to the idea of saving the vanishing wilderness, devoutly wished for the wilderness to vanish.
As the year 1907 drew to a close, no one could doubt the determination of San Francisco to secure Hetch Hetchy. Phelan, Manson, and city officials had set aside all the other options. In the nation's capital, the triumvirate of Roosevelt, Pinchot, and Garfield leaned strongly to giving San Francisco what it wanted. Of course all three agreed that the Hetch Hetchy Valley should remain und
efiled until a future time when it might be needed. Feeling more than confident, the San Franciscans descended on Washington to press Garfield to grant the city use of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. They expected very little resistance. In that assumption they were wrong. Muir, revitalized by his recent encounter with the valley, was prepared to fight.
CHAPTER 4
Two Views of One Valley
"Short-haired women and long-haired men."
CITY ENGINEER MARSDEN MANSON
"Despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators."
JOHN MUIR
IN EARLY 19o8, after five years of frustration, the San Francisco team had every reason to be confident. Their view of the use of Hetch Hetchy Valley loomed large. They had the support of Gifford Pinchot, and they expected that President Roosevelt would follow the lead of his chief forester. Secretary Garfield, although he had not made his final decision, leaned toward San Francisco. These three national figures made a formidable alliance. Roosevelt was the strongest politically, although the weakest link philosophically. Yet San Francisco anticipated that the personal influence of Roosevelt's friend, University of California president Benjamin Ide Wheeler, as well as the pleas of Phelan and Manson, would trump the arguments of Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson. Psychologically, the city could capitalize on the nationwide sympathy for a community devastated by earthquake and fire. Politicians would find it difficult to oppose the city's desire for a pure, reliable water supply, whether it was in a national park or not. The leaders of the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts, although still opposed to the city's water ambitions, were willing to talk as long as San Francisco acknowledged and guaranteed their senior water rights on the Tuolumne River. All the forces seemed aligned for victory.
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism Page 9