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

by Robert W. Righter

  27. See Charles M. Coleman, P. G. and E. of California: The Centennial Story of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, 1852-1952 (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1952), 162-78.

  28. See, for instance, Walsh, O'Keefe, Legacy of a Native Son, 114; Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, 107; David Lavender, California: Land of New Beginnings (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 358.

  29. Wanda Muir to John Muir, April 18, 19o6, in John Muir Papers, reel 16, i9o6-07.

  30. "Report of the Sub-Committee on Water Supply and Fire Protection to the Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco," dated May 26, 1906, in Reports on the Water Supplies of San Francisco, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  31. Augustus Ward to Robert Underwood Johnson, July 21, 19o8, in Robert Underwood Johnson Papers, C-B 385, box 2,Augustus Ward folder, BL.

  32. A. H. Payson, "Letter from the President of the Spring Valley Water Company to the Special Committee of the Board of Supervisors on Water Supply," dated April 13, 1908, in Reports on the Water Supplies of San Francisco, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  33. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., ist sess., October 4, 1913, 6041.

  34. Gifford Pinchot to Marsden Manson, May 28, 1906; Gifford Pinchot to Marsden Manson, November 15, 1906, both in Reports on the Water Supply of San Francisco, 1go0-1go8, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  35. Walsh, O'Keefe, Legacy of a Native Son, 125-26.

  36. "Transcript of a Hearing before Honorable James R. Garfield in San Francisco, on the Evening of July 24, 1907," in Reports on the Water Supply of San Francisco, 1go0-1go8, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  37. John Muir to Theodore Roosevelt, September 7, 1907;Theodore Roosevelt to John Muir, September 16, 1907, both in John Muir Papers, reel 16, 1907.

  38. John Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1989), 185-89.

  39. Ernest Morrison,_j. Horace McFarland: A Thorn for Beauty (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1995), 108-12.

  40. Ibid., 116-20.

  41. Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 242.

  42. Morrison, J. Horace McFarland, 153.

  43. The resolution in its entirety can be found in Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 95-96. Major Harry Coupland Benson, the acting superintendent of Yosemite under the War Department, also recommended a road to Hetch Hetchy in 1907, so that "a beautiful place would be opened to the general public." See 1907 Superintendent's Report,Yosemite Archives,Yosemite National Park.

  44. Ibid., 97.

  45. Hal Crimmel, "No Place for `Little Children and Tender, Pulpy People': John Muir in Alaska," Pacific Historical Review 92 (Fall 2001), 172.

  46. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [i9ii] 1972), 314.

  47. Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 161.

  48. John Muir to William Keith, October 7, 1907, in John Muir Papers, reel 16, 1907.

  49. John Muir to Helen Muir, October 16, 1907; John Muir to William Colby, October 17, 1907, both in ibid.

  So. John Muir to Theodore Lukens, November 4, 1907; John Muir to Charles Lummis, November 4, 1907, in ibid.

  4. TWO VIEWS OF ONE VALLEY

  i. "Sierra Club Beginnings," n.d., printed article by Ethel Olney Easton, with "Recollections of John Muir," typescript, no. 134, Regional Oral History Office, University of California.

  2. John Muir to James Garfield, September 6, 1907, in John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1907.

  3. See, for instance, the 1989 documentary film The Wilderness Idea: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot and the First Great Battle for Wilderness, which misses the essence of the struggle.

  4. Char Miller, Gord Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001), 126-27.

  5. Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (Seattle: University of Washington Press, [1972] 1947), 103.

  6. Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 275-76.

  ~. Miller, Gifford Pinchot, 122-23.

  8. In both letters and documents between 19o5 and 19o8 Pinchot and Marsden Manson suggested that Hetch Hetchy should remain undeveloped until needed, for a period estimated anywhere from 30 to 10o years.

  9. Robert Underwood Johnson to President Theodore Roosevelt, April 28, 1908, John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1908.

  1o. John Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, March 11, 19o8, John Muir Papers, reel 17, 19o8; John Muir to Theodore Lukens, March 11, 19o8, Theodore P. Lukens Papers, box 2, Correspondence, Muir folder, Huntington Library.

  11. John Muir to President Theodore Roosevelt, April 21, 1908; President Roosevelt to John Muir,April 27, 1908, both in John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1908.

  12. Marsden Manson to the Honorable Secretary of the Interior, May 7, 1908, Marsden Manson Papers, C-B 416, carton 1:44, BL.

  13. "Decision of the Secretary of the Interior Department, Washington, D.C., Granting the City and County of San Francisco, Subject to Certain Conditions, Reservoir Sites and Rights of Way at Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park," Reports on the Water Supply of San Francisco, igoo-1908, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  14. John Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, May 14, 19o8; John Muir to William Colby, May 15, 19o8, in John Muir Papers, reel 17, 19o8.

  is. Jones John Muir and the Sierra Club, ioo.

  16. "To the President of the United States and the Governors of the States assembled in Conference, from the Sierra Club Board of Directors," May 2, 19o8, in John Muir Papers, reel 17, 19o8.

  17. "Hetch Hetchy Damming Scheme," memorandum from Johan Muir, President of the Sierra Club, received May 14, 1908, by J. Horace McFarland, President, American Civic Association; Robert Underwood Johnson to John Muir, May 23, 1908, both in ibid.

  18. Quoted in Hans Huth, Nature and the Americans: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 187.

  i9. William Colby to Robert Underwood Johnson, August 17, 19o8, Robert Underwood Johnson Papers, C-B 385, box 2, Colby folder, BL.

  20. See, for instance, "Mr. John Muir's Reply to a Letter Received from Hon. James R. Garfield . . ." [circa May 1908], John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1908; and "Let Everyone Help to Save the Famous Hetch Hetchy Valley . . . ," dated November 1909, copy in Hetch Hetchy Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

  21. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Public Lands, "San Francisco and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir," Hearings on H.J. Resolution 184, both Cong., 1st Sess., December 16, 19o8 January 12, 1909, 98.

  22. John Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, December 1, 1908, John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1908.

  23. John Muir, J. N. LeConte, E. T. Parsons, and Wm. F Bade, "To All Lovers of Nature and Scenery," December 21, 19o8, John Muir Papers, Reel 17, 19o8.

  24. House, Committee on the Public Lands, "San Francisco and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir," 116-243.

  25. Ibid., 69, 91-4.

  26. Ibid. A. P. Giannini was president of the Bank of Italy, which evolved into the Bank of America. Later, under his direction, the Bank of Italy purchased many of the city's Hetch Hetchy bonds when no other bank or investor would do so.

  27. John Muir to William Colby, December 31, 19o8, John Muir Papers, reel 17, 19o8.

  28. U.S. Congress, Senate, Commnittee on the Public Lands, "Hearings on the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Site,"Joint Resolution S.R. 123, both Cong., 1st Sess., February TO, 1909, 7, 24.

  29. Ibid., 4-5,30-33,23.

  30. Ibid., 18-21.

  31. Ibid., 25-29.

  32. San Francisco Call, February 11, 1909.

  33. Collier's Weekly, reprinted in the San Francisco Bulletin, March io, 19io.

  34. Hall, "The Story of Hetch Hetchy," io. This interesting 99-page typescript is located in the William Hammond Hall Papers, Bancroft Library. In this essay, undated but written about 1925, Hall wanted to tell his side of the Lake Eleanor controversy, which certainly had sullied his reputation in the city. He probably wished t
o publish this account but failed because it is lengthy, repetitive, and above all, self-serving. In his rationale for such a long account, Hall placed inordinate confidence in his own ability to tell the story and his faith that "it is only autobiography which can be both full and altogether truthful."The manuscript, although useful in many ways, is a refutation of his statement.

  35. Hall, "The Story of Hetch Hetchy," i 8-i9.

  36. Quoted in Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, 58.

  37. Hall, "The Story of Hetch Hetchy," 71.

  38. C. D. Marx and J. D. Galloway, "Report on Lake Eleanor Lands," August 28, 1909, in Charles D. Marx Papers, SC 161, box 3, folder 7, Stanford University Archives.

  39. Hall came out of the affair a bitter man. He had a promising career as California's second state engineer, following Josiah Whitney. He then worked miracles in transforming San Francisco's barren sand hills into Golden Gate Park. He represented John Wesley Powell's irrigation survey in California. However, all these accomplishments were overshadowed by his manipulative behavior, and he became a persona non grata in the city he loved. He lived on in San Francisco much embittered as a testament that avarice can destroy an illustrious career. He died unnoticed in 1934, just a few weeks before the Hetch Hetchy water flowed to San Francisco. See Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, 81-84.

  40. "The Hetch Hetchy Project: Its Progress, Prospects and Possibilities," January 1919, 2, in SF City Engineer, 92-808 C, carton "Writings on Hetch Hetchy," folder "January, 1919," BL.

  41. Telegram from Phelan to Theodore Roosevelt, March 22, 1909, James D. Phelan Papers, C-B 8oo, box 2, folder "March, 1909," BL.

  42. Richard Ballinger to Robert Underwood Johnson, June 11, 1909, John Muir Papers, reel 18, 1909.

  43. Robert Underwood Johnson to John Muir, September 7, 1909; Frank Carpenter, Secretary to the President, to John Muir, September 6, 1909; John Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, September 14, 1909, all in ibid.

  44. San Francisco Call, October 10, 1909; San Jose Herald, October 10, 1909.

  45. Muir to Colby, October 21, 1909; Muir to Katherine Hooker and Marian, October 20, 1909, in John Muir Papers, reel 18, 1909.

  46. John Muir to Richard Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior, November 15, 1909, John Muir Papers, reel 18, 1909.

  47. An original pamphlet is in the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. Few of the pamphlets have survived.

  48. See Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 97-99.

  49. Ibid., 98-99.

  5o. Ibid., 112-13.

  51. Quoted in ibid., 117.

  52. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 119-20.

  53. William Colby to Horace McFarland, September 13, 1909, in SC Members Papers, 71/295, carton 38, folder 18, BL.

  54. Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 218.

  55. Harriet Monroe,"Camping above theYosemite-A Summer Outing with the Sierra Club" Putnam's Monthly (1909), also published in the Sierra Club Bulletin 7 (June 1909): 85-98. Monroe wrote lovingly of "the glory of the wilderness" and appreciated the fact that she "had possessed it before its ways are made smooth for all the world."Yet she realized that the Hetch Hetchy wilderness would soon change. It would soon be "made smooth," and she did not begrudge that outcome.

  Monroe may have taken some liberty with her description. Although no "spade" or plow had intruded in the valley, in 1908 there was at least one substantial building-probably three, depending on how one defines "hut."

  56. Brief of Miss Harriet Monroe to Hon. Richard A. Ballinger, n.d., 3-5, Sierra Club Members Papers, 71 /295, carton 38, folder 13, BL.

  57. William Colby to Harriet Monroe, March 3, 1910, Sierra Club Members Papers, 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  58. Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 103-4, 134.

  59. Theodore Hittell, "Sierra Club Outing 1901," ed. Robert Righter, Sierra Club Bulletin 55 (August 1970), 18-22.

  60. Carolyn Merchant, "Women and Conservation," 373-82, in Major Problems in American Environmental History, ed. Carolyn Merchant (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1993).

  61. Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of EJjiciency (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 193-94.

  62. William Colby to Mrs. L W. Gerald, G.EW C., n.d., circa July 1909; Jessie B. Gerald to Wm. Colby, September 11, 1909, in Sierra Club Members Papers, 71/295, carton 38, folder 18, BL.

  63. Dora Knowlton Ranous to R. U. Johnson, undated, Robert Underwood Johnson Papers, C-B 385, box 5, Dora Knowlton Ranous folder, BL.

  64. See Merchant, "Women and Conservation," 373.

  65. E. T. Parsons to William Colby, September 7, 1909, Sierra Club Members Papers, 71/295, carton 38, folder 18, BL. Parsons and his wife, Marion, were in contact with Janet Richards.

  66. Michael Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 64; Sierra Club, http://wwvv.sierraclub.org/history/key- figures/"Marion Randall Parsons." Accessed by author on March 2, 2002.asp.

  67. Marsden Manson, "Observations on the Denudation of Vegetation: A Suggested Remedy for California," Sierra Club Bulletin, 2 (June 1899), 295-311. Sounding much like George Perkins Marsh, Manson observed that "history and nature record no law more inflexible-no effect more certain-than that poverty and degradation follow upon the destruction of mountain forests."

  68. Quoted in Smith, Pacific Visions, 177-78.

  69. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 167: Smith, Pacific Visions, 178. Both Nash and Smith attribute this quote to a letter from Manson to G.WWoodruff, April 6, 1910, in the Manson Papers, BL. In perusing the Manson Papers, I missed it but have no cause to doubt that he wrote it.

  70. San Francisco Call, reproduced in Jonesjohn Muir and the Sierra Club, 183.

  71. Henry James, The Bostonians (NewYork: New American Library, 1984), 203.

  72. Smith, Pacific Visions, 176. Smith provides the most insightful analysis of the genderization of the Hetch Hetchy conflict.

  73. Marsden Manson, "A Statement of San Francisco's Side of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Matter, December 30, 1909," address to the Sierra Club, in Pamphlets on Hetch Hetchy, bound volume in the Bancroft Library, F869 S3.8 P25x.

  74. Smith, Pacific Visions, 177. Smith gives a detailed account of the FisherManson-McFarland 1911 horse trip to the Hetch Hetchy Valley in chapter 5 of this book.

  75. Kendrick A. Clements, "Politics and the Park: San Francisco's Fight for Hetch Hetchy, 1908-1913," Pacific Historical Review 48 (May 1979), 200.

  76. Donald Worster, "John Muir and the Roots of Environmentalism," in The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1993), 194; Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 101.

  77. John Muir, "The Hetch Hetchy Valley," Sierra Club Bulletin 6 (January 1908), 211.

  78. San Francisco Call,January 27, 1909; San Francisco Bulletin, February 28, 1910.

  79. Beverly Hodghead, "The Hetch Hetchy Water Supply," Transactions of the Commonwealth Club 4, no. 6 (November 1909).

  80. "Hill/Hopson Report made to George O. Smith, United States Geological Survey" December, 1909 (includes critical letters regarding San Francisco by both E. G. Hopson and Louis Hill) in Reports on the Water Supply of San Francisco, Board of Supervisors, 1908.

  5. SAN FRANCISCO TO "SHOW CAUSE"

  i. Horace McFarland, American Civic Association, to William Colby, Executive Director, Sierra Club, February 4, 1910, in Sierra Club Members Papers, 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 20, BL (hereafter Sierra Club Members Papers are abbreviated as SCMP)

  2. John Muir to Hon. Richard A. Ballinger, March 30, 1910, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  3. Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 123.

  4. Richard Watrous, Secretary, American Civic Association, to William Colby, March 23, 1910, in SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  5.
Fox,John Muir and His Legacy, 333, 333-57.

  6. William Frederic Bade, ed., The Life and Letters ofJohn Muir, 2 vols. (NewYork: Houghton Mifflin, 1923-1924): John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf ed. William E Bade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916). Bade also edited Steep Trails and The Cruise o#the Corwin.

  7. William Colby to William Bade, April 19, 1910, Bade to Colby, May 18, 1910, SCMP, 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  8. Wm. Bade to Wm. Colby, May 18,1910, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  9. Joseph N. LeConte should not be confused with his father, Joseph LeConte, who died in 1901. Both were active, charter members of the Sierra Club. The son was known as "Little Joe."

  io. Charles Gilman Hyde to Wm. Colby, April 25, 191o; Hyde to Colby, May 6, i9io; Colby to Muir, May 16, 1910, in SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  11. Albert L. Hurtado, "Romancing the West in the Twentieth Century:The Politics of History in a Contested Region," Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Winter 2001), 418, 417-25.

  12. William Colby to John Muir, May 16, 1910, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 21, BL.

  13. E.T. Parsons to Hon. RichardA. Ballinger, February 7, 1910, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 20; Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 125-26.

  14. Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 126.

  15. Miller, Gord Pinchot, 207.

  16. Richardson, Politics of Conservation, 72-84; Miller, GiJJord Pinchot, 208-9.

  17. Richardson, Politics of Conservation, 136-37.

  18. Stephen T. Mather to Wm. Colby, April 4, 1911, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 23, BL. At this time Mather was the owner ofThorkildsen-Mather Company of Chicago, specializing in borax and soda ash. Colby and Mather were already good friends, and Mather comments on the pleasurable afternoon he spent at Colby and his wife's hone.

  19. Copy of letter from Percy Long, City Attorney to Walter L. Fisher, Sec. of the Interior, January 20, 1912, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 24, BL.

  20. Freeman's salary was a source of speculation. Two sources mention Freeman's consulting fee at $400 an hour But the sources are engineers who did not like Freeman and were probably jealous of his success. $400 a day would still be a princely rate. S. L. Foster to Wm. Colby, October 2, 1912, SCMP, 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 25, BL. Freeman's actual wages included a $2,500 yearly retainer, $200 a day for work in the field, and $ioo a day for work at his home office. These conditions were spelled out in a letter from Freeman to James Rolph, mayor, dated September 23, 1912, affixed to the inside back page of Marsden Manson's annotated copy of the Freeman Report, found in Marsden Manson Papers, C-B 416, carton 2:4, BL.