The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism

by Robert W. Righter

  As for me-I am only a poor petticoat creature without a vote-what would my (?) senators and representatives care for my protest?-I will show the open letter to such men as I know, and test the values of "feminine influence," so highly recommended by the "Antis," and maybe I can get them to protest!63

  Ranous's clever strategy suggests another factor in evaluating the role of women in the Hetch Hetchy struggle. In the main, they were politically invisible, remaining in the background but working their ways, as Ranous did, with their male or female friends and evidencing the dedication of thousands of women to the cause of conservation.64 One such women was Janet Richards, a professional lecturer who was quite willing to give a talk on Hetch Hetchy if the Society for the Protection of National Parks would stand the cost of some lantern slides. During the battle, she gave an evening lecture in Washington to wives of senators and representatives, some of whom brought their husbands.65 Marion Randall Parsons also dedicated herself to the cause. Married to Edward T. Parsons, aide and friend of Muir, Marion met her husband while on the Sierra Club outing of 1903. Both became heavily involved in Hetch Hetchy, and as Muir's health began to fail, Edward acted as his friend's amanuensis, often answering his correspondence. Marion, an accomplished fiction and nonfiction writer, assisted. She wrote moving letters on the beauty of the Sierra Nevada, particularly Hetch Hetchy. When Edward died suddenly in early 1914, Marion assuaged her grief by becoming John Muir's secretary, staying close by his side and assisting in the writing and editing of Muir's Travels in Alaska.66

  Although Muir was fairly tough skinned, occasionally Parson and Colby found it necessary to encourage and protect their aging leader. Attacks came from the San Francisco press and the city's advocates of the Hetch Hetchy plan. The press often labeled Muir and his supporters "nature fakers," sug gesting a bogus, impractical cause. Muir, who seemed above personal reproach, became feminized: a flighty, impractical person who seemed much detached from the practical needs of people, preferring to gaze at stars, reflect on the flow of running water, or describe the effervescent world of a water ouzel. Muir might engage in such activities, but such a person should not presume to enter or even comment on the practical water or power needs of cities and societies. These were male prerogatives. Phelan and the San Francisco engineers viewed Muir much as stolid New England farmers viewed Henry David Thoreau: They were both rather useless idealistic visionaries who eschewed the business of making a living, preferring to spend their days in baffling ways. Of course, Muir was, after 188o, a very practical orchardist who, true to his Scottish heritage, drove a hard bargain and was not averse to making a profit while he was at it. However, the practical Muir was a personality that few people in the Bay Area or elsewhere knew

  No one played the gender card better than City Engineer Marsden Manson, who was the chief spokesman for San Francisco's designs on the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Muir's writings, so attractive to women, annoyed Manson. Although the engineer was a member of the Sierra Club and had published in the Sierra Club Bulletin, he delighted in lampooning Muir's flowery writing style.67 Muir's views were far too full of "verbal lingerie," allowing the romantic mountaineer to speak of "networks," "veils," "downy feathers," "plumes," and "embroideries."68 Such writing by the archetypal "nature faker" obscured the practical facts that Manson believed "any sane human" could grasp. "Short-haired women and long-haired men" dominated these rabid sentimentalists, he claitned.69 Perhaps the most flagrant attack on Muir came from the San Francisco Call, surely one of Manson's favorite newspapers. The fiery newspaper ran a cartoon of Muir as a plump woman with a housewife's dress, flowered hat, and a broom, sweeping back the flood of water issuing from the "Hetch Hetchy Project." One could read the iconography differently, but most would see Muir as a middle-aged female fool vainly trying to hold back the flow of progress.70

  We do not know if Manson read Henry James, but he would agree with the novelist's 1885 concern that his "whole generation is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the world," ushering in a "feminine, nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy."71 Criticism of the city's Hetch Hetchy plans smacked of such misplaced, false delicacy, and Manson made this clear. Women, and Muir, should confine their activities to home and the bassinet. His intemperate writings probably hurt San Francisco's cause. Manson was too hot tempered, too talkative, unable to listen or engage in rational debate. He was passionate and viewed "conservation as the public application of engineering expertise.."72 He was incensed when Muir and Colby published the November 1909 pamphlet, calling it "twenty odd pages of garbled quotations and specious statement" that were utterly untrue.73 When J. Horace McFarland accompanied Manson and Secretary of the Interior Walter Fisher to Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1911, McFarland decided that rather than contest every point with the caustic Manson, he would just let him talk until he hung himself. It was a perfect strategy.74

  In their righteousness Muir and Manson had much in common. Manson believed that technology and engineering would create an advanced civilization. Muir believed there were limits. And much as each might vilify the other's motive, as historian Kendrick Clements has noted, "the tragic irony of the Hetch Hetchy controversy was the city and its opponents were seeking to serve the public interest as each understood it." 75 Manson was quite convinced that he was a Progressive reformer, whose passion served the people of San Francisco. Muir was no less fiery in his cause. Much like his firebrand father, Muir was uncompromising. He may have rejected his father's harsh brand of Christianity, but he did not necessarily eschew his father's fervent style. Muir simply saw divinity in the natural world, substituting it for Christianity as a guiding philosophy. He proselytized for that philosophy with unrestrained enthusiasm. Muir, according to one view, successfully took "biblical language and inverted it to proclaim the passion of attachment, not to a supernatural world but to a natural one."76 All of this is to say that in many ways Muir was a zealot, quite determined to bring salvation to the Hetch Hetchy. Valley. Like any true believer, he employed hyperbole, identifying any opponent of the valley's deliverance as agents of Satan, greedy capitalists, or corrupt politicians. Writing in 19o8, Muir castigated not only individuals but the materialism of the times: "In these ravaging money-mad days monopolizing San Francisco capitalists are now doing their best to destroy the Yosemite Park." These "cunning drivers," he wrote, worked "in darkness like moles in a low-lying meadow" They wanted the reservoir "simply [so] that comparatively private gain may be made out of universal public loss.."77 No person of sensitivity and good moral standing could favor the damming of the valley. When it came to Hetch Hetchy there were no gray areas, only black or white.

  Both Manson and Muir found an eager outlet for their opposing passions in the newspapers of the day. The San Francisco newspapers, particularly the Exarniner, Call, Bulletin, and Chronicle, vigorously supported the city's interests and the Manson view When Muir claimed that the use of water and power from Hetch Hetchy would advance "predatory interests," the Call called Muir to task, noting that the only predatory interests would be the needs of a million people. Muir's ideas were "the conservation of natural resources run mad. . . . Mr. Muir fails utterly to understand the policy and pushes it to absurdity"The Bulletin admitted that most women were "commonly supposed to be on the side of sentiment," but the editor believed that sensible women would not be taken in by Muir's foolish notions about nature.?

  While it was nearly impossible to read a good word on Muir in the San Francisco papers, this was not the case nationwide. The New York Times, the Boston Transcript, and various newspapers picked up the Hetch Hetchy story. William Colby and Eastern members of the Society for the Preservation of National Parks saw to it that editors received their press releases, as well as letters to the editor by such men as Muir, McFarland, Johnson,Allen Chamberlain, and Colby. Many of these newspapers responded with pro-preservation editorials, much to the annoyance of the San Francisco editors, who viewed Hetch Hetchy as a region
al issue. Such outbursts they considered meddling by the ill informed.

  As the year i9o9 came to a close, even prominent San Franciscans sought compromise. The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco offered a forum with the hope that some sort of middle ground could be reached. The club membership met fortnightly for lunch, and an invited speaker presented a policy issue of significance. Although dominated by business interests, the club prided itself on a logical, impartial approach to controversial issues. Hetch Hetchy was the subject of more than one meeting. The club president even appointed an investigating committee, a step sometimes taken for issues of special importance. The Hetch Hetchy committee, headed by Beverly Hodghead, assisted by E.A.Walcott, Frank Adams, and J. K. Moffitt, reported to the membership in November 1909. Whereas San Francisco politicians and City Engineer Manson fully expected the committee to rubber-stamp the city's plans, they were astonished at the endorsement of the Sierra Club position. The committee made three recommendations: (i) Lake Eleanor should be fully developed, (2) "Hetch Hetchy should be held as a resource of the bay cities to be used after the above sources have been developed to their full capacity," and (3) all camping privileges and other uses must remain with the people.79

  Members read Harriet Monroe's aesthetic description of the valley as a "garden of paradise" where the shining river "wandered lazily . . . turning back upon its course, tangling itself into S's and M's as if it were loath to leave so beautiful a place." The report analyzed the Hammond-Hall claims to Lake Eleanor water, recommending that they be resolved. The committee did not address land issues within the valley, except to note that the natural attractions would be permanently lost should the city persist in its plans. The message was clear: WAIT! The city should not be in a hurry. There was plenty of water if the city developed Lake Eleanor and, presumably, Cherry Creek. Hetch Hetchy Valley should be reserved, leaving a future generation to decide its fate.

  Of course this solution was not new Both Roosevelt and Pinchot had advocated such a compromise. Muir and the Society for the Protection of National Parks were more than willing, indeed eager, to grant the city Lake Eleanor. The Commonwealth Club, however, not only prided itself on advocating growth and beautification but also usually supported the side of business. To advance any policy that might hamstring economic progress could border on sacrilege. Whether the report represented the majority view of the membership went unrecorded, but the surfacing of a report that opposed the views of city leaders surely suggested that the residents were not so committed to the Hetch Hetchy project as commonly thought.

  The new secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger, soon realized that Hetch Hetchy represented a hornet's nest of conflicting views. Given the situation and beset with petitions to void the Garfield grant, he took the recommendation of the Senate Committee on Public Lands and others to authorize a study. The study would give him time and ease the pressure, no matter which direction he might turn.

  E. G. Hopson and Louis J. Hill, both engineers with the U.S. Geological Survey, conducted the research and compiled the study that reached Ballinger's desk in December i9o9.The budget to produce the work was totally inadequate. Thus, the two engineers had to rely greatly on information from Manson and his city engineer's office. According to the two men, San Francisco was not forthcoming. Hopson wrote his boss, George O. Smith, that the information provided by the city was "practically nil." He expressed incredulity that a great city could base its decision for a costly system "on the strength of the few scanty facts that have been obtained." His partner, Louis Hill, was equally disenchanted, noting that he was "surprised to learn how little San Francisco really knows about the water supply she desires to acquire or of other possible sources which might be available." Not only were they uninformed, but the city engineer's office seemed to be devious and lacking in frankness.5°

  FIGURE 8. The San Francisco Call often lampooned John Muir and the "nature lovers" as impractical, feminine, and foolish. Above all, the newspaper claimed, the valley defenders had little understanding of technological progress in an advancing civilization. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  Like the Commonwealth Club report, the official Hill and Hopson study recommended that Lake Eleanor-Cherry Creek be developed, assuring a storage capacity of 350,000 acre-feet. If the city needed more storage, the Poopenaut Valley, located a mile below the Hetch Hetchy Valley, could be dammed, providing an additional 30,000 acre-feet of water. In concert these sources should mean that the city would not have to use the Hetch Hetchy Valley for at least So years. Over the Christmas holiday season and the New Year, Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger contemplated what he should do.

  CHAPTER 5

  San Francisco to "Show Cause"

  "By care in the designs, the use for water supply can be made to add greatly to the scenic value."

  THE FREEMAN REPORT

  IN EARLY February 1910 J. Horace McFarland, head of the American Civic Association, wrote an intriguing letter to William Colby. "If you were sitting at my desk," he exclaimed, "I could tell you in full detail some things I cannot write about the Hetch Hetchy situation." He had just left the office of Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger, and "if I was William E. Colby, E. T. Parsons, and particularly if I was John Muir," he wrote, "I would try to read through the lines of this letter and between them, and see that there is strong hope that the right will triumph.."' By the end of the month the secret was out. Ballinger had ordered San Francisco to "show cause" as to why the Hetch Hetchy Valley should not be deleted from the Garfield grant. The city would have to provide conclusive proof that it needed the valley-not an easy task. It was a triumphant moment for those who had worked to safeguard Hetch Hetchy. John Muir wrote Ballinger that "all the right-minded people throughout the country and particularly out here, are rejoicing over the stand you have taken for the preservation of our National Parks.."2 For the valley defenders it was a high point, and as historian Holway Jones noted, "it appeared that the fight was won and that nothing . . . could stem the tide of victory."3

  At San Francisco's City Hall, the mayor, the city engineer, and various officials were both disappointed and belligerent. They immediately requested a copy of the Geological Survey report by Louis Hill and E. G. Hopson, which formed the basis for Ballinger's decision. They also asked for a hearing and even had the audacity to set the date.4 The secretary, of course, was not to be bullied about, and while granting the city a hearing, he would set the place and the time: Washington, D.C., May 18, 19io.

  Once more the momentum had swung, this time to those who wished to shield the valley from San Francisco, reserving it for tourism and future generations. Environmental disputes are not won by the rightness of a cause-if that can be determined-but more often by money and persistence. Defenders of Hetch Hetchy won the first round when Secretary of the Interior Ethan Hitchcock concluded that the sanctity of Yosemite National Park could not be violated. He denied San Francisco a permit. However, rather than retiring, city leaders hesitated momentarily and then moved forward with renewed energy and determination. The tide turned in 1908, when Secretary Garfield granted the city the use of the valley. By this time, however, John Muir and his Sierra Club were fully awakened to the threat. The messianic leader for scenic lands and the national parks led a nationwide campaign to stop the San Francisco steamroller. Now, with Ballinger's "show cause" announcement, Muir's victory seemed close at hand. His forces delivered a knockout punch and all that was necessary was the referee's count to ten. San Francisco, however, returned to its feet by count five and rallied to begin a devastating counterpunching attack. With power, political savvy, commitment, a dynamic mayor, and unlimited amounts of money, the city would take the offensive with a talented new city engineer and a grand Hetch Hetchy water proposal designed by the top civil engineer in the nation. With very limited funds, the Sierra Club and the Society for the Protection of the National Parks did the best they could to defend their position, but the city once again regained the mom
entum as the fate of the valley moved toward resolution.

  Both sides prepared for the May i9io hearing before Secretary Ballinger. While San Francisco city attorney Percy Long and city engineer Marsden Manson prepared a brief to substantiate the city's case, the defenders of the valley made their own plans. In early March Colby suggested that Muir come down and stay at his Berkeley home so that the two might plan, anticipating San Francisco's arguments. As the two sides readied, the unequal nature of the fight became evident. San Francisco had a permanent staff, a lobbyist, money to pay any consultant who might prove helpful, and a budget that allowed for comfortable travel and first-class lodgings at Washington's Willard Hotel. The Sierra Club had little, save for the sympathies of certain Appalachian Mountain Club members and the support of leaders of the American Civic Association. The club had to appeal for contributions and depend on pro bono legal work and on the willingness of reasonably affluent members and friends to contribute their time and money. Although this group would not label itself radical, in many ways its members were "radical amateurs": middle-class, white, well-educated men and women who volunteered endless hours in a cause they believed in. For most of the men and women it was a moral crusade, and their work, dedication, and occasional success became "the driving force of conservation history."s

  One example of such dedication was young William Frederic Bade, who held the chair of Old Testament literature and Semitic languages at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. He was an avid member of the club and so devoted to John Muir that following the "prophet's" death, Muir's daughters asked that Bade become the executor of Muir's literary work. Eventually the professor edited five volumes of Muir's writings, while also serving as editor of the Sierra Club Bulletin.6 In 1910 Bade was enjoying a sabbatical year of research in the British Museum and around Europe. In spite of his scholarly endeavors, he kept close tabs on the Hetch Hetchy situation and even lectured on the issue to his fellow ship passengers and anyone else who would listen. When Bade heard of the upcoming hearing, he wrote Colby that he was willing "to cross the pond" to Washington, but he had no money. Colby responded that the hearing was crucial and "we must have you there. In a few days I will send you about $200.00." It was time "to strike a telling blow," and Bade's testimony could be unique and timely since he had consulted with recreational experts in Switzerland and elsewhere.? Rather than aesthetic themes, the religious studies professor would defend the valley with solid economic arguments, anticipating its development as a tourist center.8