21. Sec. Fisher to Mayor of San Francisco, May 20, 1912, SCMP 71 /295 C, carton 38, folder 24, BL.
22. Walter A. Fisher to Mayor James Rolph, Jr., May 28, 1912; J. Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, June 1, 1912; Allen Chamberlain to Wm. Colby, June 3, 1912, SCMP, 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 24, BL.
23. The Hetch Hetchy Water Supply for San Francisco, 1912 report by John R. Freeman (San Francisco: Rincon Publishing Company for the Board of Supervisors, 1912). 1 was so impressed with the size and weight of the report that I asked Southern Methodist University DeGolyer Library former director David Fanner if he might weigh the volume. He took it to the adjacent post office and on his return announced: five pounds, eight ounces.
24. Ibid., 43, 46.
25. Ibid., 6, Io.
26. Ibid., 147-48.
27. Ibid., 149-51.
28. Ibid., 138-39.
29. Freeman's estimate of the Bay Area population was reasonably close.The 2000 Census records show that San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda-the counties that border the San Francisco Bay-have a population of 4,623,166. Marin County was not part of Freeman's calculations.
30. Ibid., 161-401.
31. Donald C. Jackson, Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 111.
32. Robert Underwood Johnson to Wm. Colby, September ii, 1912; J. Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, September 11, 1912; Harriet Monroe to Wm. Colby, September 17, 1912: Will. Colby to J. Horace McFarland, October 16, 1912, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 25, BL.
33. Starr, Endangered Dreams, 282. Starr relates the story of Hetch Hetchy in a chapter titled "Valley in Discord."
34. Colby Brief, 7-8, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 13, BL. Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, quotes a large part of the brief (135-45), but I have chosen to use the copy in the above collection.
35. Ibid.
36. George Wharton James, Winter Sports at Huntington Lake Lodge in the High Sierras (Pasadena, Calif.: Radiant Life Press, 1916), tells the story of this first winter carnival. By the 1930s the popularity of winter sports led to the establishment of Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park, the first winter sports center in California. Obviously, the Colby Brief presaged the coming economic importance of winter sports.
37. Colby Brief, 26-29. The proponents of the darn suggested that once the Hetch Hetchy "soft water" was available, women would love it because in washing clothes they would use only a half or a third of the soap they were then using. Hence Colby's mention of soap.
38. The road recommendation came as part of a first formal statement opposing San Francisco's plans drafted by Muir, Colby, "Little Joe" LeConte, Will. Bade, and Edward Taylor Parsons, quoted in Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 95-97. Also see Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 25.
39. John Muir, Our National Parks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 3-4. In 1912 neither Muir nor Colby anticipated the number of automobiles that were massmanufactured in the 192os and that descended onYosemite National Park.
40. Issel, Cherny, San Francisco, 1865-1932, 161-62.
41. I am in debt to Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams, 284, for the description of Mayor Rolph.
42. Michael O'Shaughnessy was the first engineer to consider seriously the possi bility of a Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco to Marin County and the northern regions. Had the Hetch Hetchy idea not moved forward, it is very possible that O'Shaughnessy might have devoted his engineering talents to designing and advocating the great bridge. See Starr, Endangered Dreams, 330-31.
43. M. M. O'Shaughnessy, "Irrigation Works in the Hawaiian Islands," Engineering News 61 (April 15, 1909), 399-403.The Olokele canal is still maintained today on the Big Island, and as an outdoor adventure, one can take a two-and-a-half-mile kayak trip.
44. Los AngelesTimes,August 30, 19o8.
45. Michael M. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy: Its Origins and History (San Francisco: Privately printed by the Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1934), 13. O'Shaughnessy's recollections contain a number of verbatim letters as well as his interpretation of the fight.
46. Rose Wilder Lane, "The Building of Hetch Hetchy," serial account running in the San Francisco Bulletin, October 14-November 14, 1916. Composed from interviews with O'Shaughnessy.
47. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 22-23; see also "Site Inspection, September, 1912," 18 pp., in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton 3, folder "Reports, 1912", BL.
48. J. Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, September 27, 1911, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 23, BL.
49. Ibid.
5o. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Robert Marshall, U.S. Geological Survey, to Wm. Colby, September 29, 1911, in ibid.
53. J. D. Dockweiler, Report on Sources of Water Supply, East Region of San Francisco Bay (5o9-page typescript, prepared for the cities of Oakland and Berkeley, but jointly with San Francisco at the request of Percy V. Long, City Attorney), copy in the San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library.
54. Hiram M. Chittenden, ed., The Water Supply of San Francisco (Spring Valley Water Company, 1912), 506 pages.
55. J. Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, December 28, 1912, SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 25, BL.
56. Telegrams to Wm. Colby, Alden Sampson, November 25; McFarland, November 26; Bade, November 27; Sampson, November 29, November 30, in SCMP 71/295 C, carton 38, folder 25, BL.
57. J. Horace McFarland to Stephen Mather, December 2, 1912, in ibid.
58. See H. Duane Hampton, How the U.S. Army Saved Our National Parks (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971), and the more recent Meyerson, Nature'sArrny (2001).
59. Ben R. Martin, "The Hetch Hereby Controversy: The Value of Nature in a Technological Society," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Brandeis University, 1981, 302; Carroll Purcell, The Machine in America (Balti- more:Johns Hopkins University Press), 140;W111. Colby to Allen Chamberlain, January 12, 1912, SCMP 71 /295 C, carton 34, folder 23, BL.
60. Smith, Pacific Visions, 18o.
61. U.S. Senate, Committee on the Public Lands, "Hearings on Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Site,"Joint Resolution S.R. 123, February TO, 19o9, 9.
62. Clements, "Politics and the Park," 203.
63. Hetch Hetchy. Report ofAdvisory Board ofArmy Engineers to the Secretary o_f the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 14-15.
64. In 1920 O'Shaughnessy reported that Taylor, in 1920 a general, was "very much impressed" and "a sincere believer" in the development undertaken by the city. In 1923 O'Shaughnessy introduced Biddle to the city supervisors as a man responsible for the project. See SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton 2, folder "Reports, 1920," and carton 4, folder "Clippings, Jan.-Aug. 1923," BL.
65. Martin, "The Hetch Hetchy Controversy" 444.
66. Secretary Walter Fisher to Mayor James Rolfe, March 1, 1913, quoted in Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 151.
6. CONGRESS DECIDES
I. Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, December 28, 1912, SCMP 71/295, carton 38, folder 25, BL.
2. Richard Watrous to Wm. Colby, March TO, 1913, SCMP 71/295, Carton 38, folder 26, BL. After the final defeat, Horace McFarland singled out Lane's appointment as the most important factor. See Horace McFarland to Wm. Colby, December 20, 1913, SCMP, 71/295, carton 38, folder 27, BL.
3. Horace M. Albright, Marian Albright Schenck, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 20.
4. Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 79 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 5:25, 558-59.
5. Ibid., 5:27, 126, 130-31. Also see Arthur Link, Wilson and the New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 18-19. Contrary to House's assessment, Norman Hapgood did not represent the "extreme view" of Eastern conservationists. In 1913 he would endorse the San Francisco plan to invade Hetch Hetchy, much to the chagrin of Sierra Club members,
such as Harold Bradley, a young man who would eventually assume a leadership role.
6. Lane, "The Building of Hetch Hetchy"The journalist interviewed O'Shaughnessy extensively; thus this story is probably true in general, but with some journalistic liberties.
7. Clements, "Politics and the Park," 206-7.
8. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 46.
9. Pinchot's and Newell's and Phelan's testimony in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Public Lands, "Hetch Hetchy Grant to San Francisco" by Mr. Raker, Rep. no. 41, 63rd Cong., 1st sess., to accompany H.R. 7207, 25-31; also in Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 50 (August 29, 1913), 3907-9. Also see Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 157.
10. Clements, "Politics and the Park," 209-11.
ii. Ibid., 211-12, 3896.
12. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 1st sess., vol. So (August 29, 1913), 3972-73.
13. Ibid., 3974-75.
14. Ibid. (September 3, 1913), 4151;Thomson quote from ibid. (August 30, 1913), 3977.
is. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 47.
16. See Hal Rothman, Preserving Different Paths: The American National Monuments (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 61-64, for a more complete story of the politics surrounding Kent and the Muir Woods gift.
17. William Kent to John Muir, January 16, 1908; Muir to Kent, January 14, 1908, in John Muir Papers, reel 17, 1908.
18. Anne F Hyde, "William Kent:The Puzzle of Progressive Conservationists," in California Progressivism Revisited, ed. William Deverell and Tom Sitton (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 34-53, passim.
19. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 5o, (August 29, 1913), 3963.
20. Clements, "Politics and the Park," 2o 8, n. 66.
21. Quote from Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 337.
22. See E. T. Parsons to Wm. Colby, August 1, 1913, in Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 159.
23. Robert Underwood Johnson, "The Hetch Hetchy scheme; why it should not be rushed through the extra session; an open letter to the American people," Library of Congress "An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera," http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage. Digital ID http://hdl. loc,gov.vbc/vbpe 13oo8oa Date Accessed, March 15, 2002.
24. William Howard Taft to Robert Underwood Johnson, October 30, 1913, in Robert Underwood Johnson Papers, C-D 385, "Taft" folder, BL.
25. Albert Bushnell Hart to Robert Underwood Johnson, November 10, 1913, in ibid., "Hart" folder, BL.
26. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 51 (November 25, 1913), 6012; Ashurst material from ibid., (December 5, 1913), 234-35. Senator Ashurst asked that some of the letters-about 20-be inserted into the record, but they all reflected his support of the Raker bill. Reed quote from ibid. (December 6, 1913), 362; Albright, Schenck, Creating the National Park Service, 20.
27. Fred L. Israel, Nevada's Key Pittman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 31.
28. "Speech of Hon. John D. Works of California in the Senate of the U.S., December 2-3, 1913," Washington, D.C., 6 (copy in the San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library).
29. I am in debt to Richard Lowitt's article, "Hetch Hetchy Phase II: The Senate Debate," in Frontier and Region: Essays in Honor of Martin Ridge, ed. Robert C. Ritchie and Paul Andrew Hutton (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 109-20.
30. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 51 (December 5, 1913), 290-97.
31. Ibid. (December 4, 1913), 199-20o.The next day, December 5, Senator Bacon chastised his fellow senators for absenting themselves the night before when Senator Gronna had the floor, particularly since Gronna was "making an interesting and logical argument on the question" (243).
32. Ibid. (December 5, 1913), 273-74.
33. Ibid., 274.
34. Ibid. (December 6, 1913), 233-34.
35. Ibid. (December 5, 1913), 238; Lowitt, "Retch Hetchy Phase II," 115-17.
36. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 51 (December 6, 1913), 344, 347.
37. Ibid., 382, 385-86.
38. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 52.
39. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 51 (December 19, 1913), 1189. 40. Perhaps out of frustration, Muir wrote Robert Underwood Johnson a letter critical of the efforts of his West Coast leaders. In truth, they were tired and without financial support; they might be excused for letting up a bit, particularly when the hopelessness of their situation became clear. Letter quoted in Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 160.
41. Clements, "Politics and the Park," 214.
42. The Senate did at one point discuss the possible financial loss to San Francisco regarding land and water rights purchases if the Raker bill failed of passage. The consensus was that the federal government would make it right with the city. Considering the nominal purchase price of land in Hetch Hetchy Valley, no doubt one of the first "inholding" purchases of the National Park Service (1916) would have been the meadowlands of the valley.
In regard to Wilson and Lane, I must again reiterate that there is no evidence that Wilson knew anything about Hetch Hetchy. And, it appears, Lane had not met Wilson prior to his appointment. Neither is there written evidence that Colonel House and Lane ever discussed the Hetch Hetchy issue. One can, however, make that dangerous leap of faith that the Colonel and Lane had discussed Hetch Hetchy in conjunction with their conversation on conservation policy.
43. Jones,John Muir and the Sierra Club, 166-67.
44. Quoted in ibid., 168.
45 . Quoted in Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 341.
46. John Muir to Helen [Muir], January 12, 1914, John Muir Papers, reel 22, 1914.
47. Ibid.
48. Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 344.
7. TO BUILD A DAM
i. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 47.
2. Ed L. Head to O'Shaughnessy, n.d.; Congressman John Raker to M. M. O'Shaughnessy, April 22, 1914, in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton "Correspondence Apr. 1912-Aug. 1914," folder Dec. 1913, BL.
3. J. Horace McFarland to M. M. O'Shaughnessy, August 4, 1914, quoted in Morrison,) Horace McFarland, 171-72. I don't wish to suggest that McFarland abandoned the national parks. He was instrumental in writing and lobbying for the National Parks Act of 1916.
4. M. M. O'Shaughnessy,"Retch Hetchy Water Supply of the City and County of San Francisco, California," January 1917, 4, in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, box i, folder "Reports 1917," BL.
5. "Discussion of a Proposed Plan for disposing of the Hetch Hetchy Water Supply Bonds of i9io," typescript, SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton i, folder "Reports 1915," BL.
6. M. M. O'Shaughnessy, "Tentative Program of Construction, and Preliminary Estimate of Cost," May 7, 1915, ibid.
7. Ted Wurm, Hetch Hetchy and Its Dam Railroad (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1973), 28. By its title and at first glance, Ted Wurm's book seems written for railway buffs. However, because Wurm became more interested in the Hetch Hetchy system than in the railroad, there is a great amount of information on the building of the dam and the aqueduct system. Although Wurm is an unabashed apologist for the city, his oral history work and examination of esoteric materials provides details and anecdotes unavailable elsewhere.
8. "The History and Economic Aspect to Date of the San Francisco-Hetch Hetchy Water Supply," typescript of 3o-page report by E. E. Schmitz, 10, 21, in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, box 1, folder "Reports 1919," BL.
9. Ibid. Also see Rudolph W.Van Norden, "The Present Status of Hetch Hetchy" Journal of Electricity 4i (November i5, 1918), 438-43.
1o. Wurm, Hetch Hetchy, 78-79.
ii. Ibid. In his book on Hetch Hetchy, written about 1930, O'Shaughnessy states that the 88o acres on the reservoir bottom were "cleared for $5o,ooo." But I prefer to use figures from his report at the time of the event.
12. Ise, Our National Park Policy, 194-95.
13. Quoted in Wurm, Hetch Hetchy,
63.
14. SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, box 1, folder "Reports 1916," BL
15. Wunn, Hetch Hetchy, 151.
16. Joseph E. Stevens, Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 3-5, 35-36.
i7. Ibid. For the Hoover Dam the Wattis brothers led the charge that was instrumental in convincing such leaders as Warren Bechtel and Henry Kaiser to form the Six Companies, a consortium responsible for building the monumental dam that tamed the Colorado River.
18. O'Shaughnessy, Hetch Hetchy, 52.
i9. This claim was justified, although the Hoover and Shasta dams, as well as the Chambon Dam in France, would soon claim the distinction. See William Creager, Joel D. Justin, Julian Hinds, Engineering for Dams: Volume 2, Concrete Dams (London: JohnWiley and Sons, i95i), chart, 350-55.
20. "Contract 61 for the Construction of the Hetch Hetchy Dam and Appurtenant Work," in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton 2, folder "Specifications 1919," BL.
21. Wurm, Hetch Hetchy, 86.
22. M. M. O'Shaughnessy, "Speech before the Commonwealth Club," November i9, 1919, in SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, carton "Writings Hetch Hetchy," folder "Nov. i9, 1919, speech," BL.
23. Wurm, Hetch Hetchy, 87, 285.
24. Ibid., 87-88.
25. Elford Eddy, "The Building of Hetch Hetchy," San Francisco Call, December 19, 1921-February II, 1922.
26. William Hamilton, "Human Engineering," Co-operation: The Journal of Efficiency, October 1921, 12; Fred D. MacBeth, Attorney, to M. M. O'Shaughnessy, June 30, 1922, SF City Engineer, 92/808 C, box 1, folder "Corr. 1922," BL.
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism Page 35