Those who shepherded the national parks bill through Congress had been deeply involved with the Hetch Hetchy fight. Both sides seemed to mend their ideological disagreements. In December 1915 Representative John Raker introduced House Resolution 434, a bill to establish the National Park Service. William Kent became an official sponsor. Again, two determined supporters of San Francisco's claim to Hetch Hetchy sponsored a bill to help ensure that such an invasion would not happen again. Horace Albright recalled that the bill's advocates held continuous strategy sessions. Kent, Raker, Stephen Mather, Robert Yard, Robert B. Marshall, J. Horace McFarland, Richard Watrous, Gilbert Grosvenor, Enos Mills, William Colby, Fairfield Osborn, and others gathered for innumerable meetings in Kent's Georgetown home,Yard's apartment, the Cosmos Club, or the offices of the National Geographic Society8 With this dedicated group and the help of innumerable volunteers, the national parks bill moved quickly through Congress, and President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law, thus establishing the National Park Service, on August 25, 1916.9
With the exceptions of Grosvenor andYard, every one of the men who worked on the national park bill had participated in the Hetch Hetchy struggle, and certainly not all had fought against San Francisco. Albright believed that Raker "always felt badly about his part in promoting Hetch Hetchy and hoped he could redeem himself by pushing through a national park service bill with his name attached." Raker's inconsistency bemused some of the legislators. "What was this?" they asked, according to Albright. "A fellow who helped destroy part of Yosemite is now mothering a national park bureau?"10 The same might be said of Kent, although by the 1920s this strong advocate of public power questioned his own support of the Raker Act.
The fight over Hetch Hetchy not only illustrated the need for a park agency but also clarified that the U.S. Forest Service should not be that agency. Although Gifford Pinchot never mentioned Hetch Hetchy in his autobiography, Breaking New Ground, the controversy played an important role in limiting the Forest Service's jurisdiction. Had it not been for the controversy, Pinchot and the service might have succeeded in becoming the guardian of the national parks. Control of the parks had been Chief Forester Pinchot's intention from the time he succeeded in moving the Forest Reserves into the Department of Agriculture in 1905. In that year he wrote Robert Underwood Johnson that he would have nothing to do with the national parks "until they also are turned over by law to the Department of Agriculture." In case Johnson should miss his message, he stated that "I am very strongly of opinion that the National Parks ought to be in the same hands as the Forest Reserves, and I hope something may be done in that direction at the next session of Congress." 11 Secretary of the Interior James Garfield endorsed the idea that the parks and forests were "practically the same.."12 The following year Pinchot, at the height of his administrative power, committed himself to the San Francisco cause, suggesting to Marsden Manson, shortly after the earthquake and fire, that San Francisco "make provision for a water supply from theYosemite National Park." He would "stand ready to render any assistance which lies in my power."13 Reading between the lines, Hetch Hetchy under Forest Service governance would privilege the city's interests over those less inclined to sacrifice the valley. Pinchot never wavered from his ambition, placing whatever barriers he could muster to defeat congressional bills creating a separate national park agency.
If Pinchot's primary purpose was to gain control of the national parks for the U.S. Forest Service, his Hetch Hetchy strategy proved flawed. His determination-some would call it stubbornness-often frustrated and, indeed, angered the defenders of the valley. In supporting San Francisco's claim, he alienated the most important conservationists responsible for the National Parks Act of 1916. Horace McFarland, William Colby, Muir, Allen Chamberlain, and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. came to despair of changing Pinchot's dogmatic position regarding the valley. In eight years he had not budged, writing and testifying in 1913 that "the thing seems to me to be clear beyond the possibility of arguments. To put it baldly-the intermittent esthetic enjoyment of less than one percent is being balanced against the daily comfort and welfare of 99 percent." Such a strong Progressive social statement ultimately prevailed, and yet in stamping a utilitarian seal on Yosemite National Park, the idea of turning over all the parks to the Pinchot philosophy seemed absolutely repugnant. Pinchot and forester Henry Graves's argument that there was little difference in the management objectives of the national forests and of the national parks seemed incongruous to McFarland, who defined the national parks as "the nation's playgrounds" and the national forests as "the nation's woodlot." The chasm between the two definitions was so deep and wide that, in McFarland's opinion, it could not be closed. Pinchot's uncompromising stance on Hetch Hetchy was evidence enough that neither he nor his Forest Service could be entrusted with the national parks.14 Gradually, particularly under the Wilson administration, Pinchot's and the Forest Service's unrelenting pressure to administer the parks lessened, and the idea of a new and separate agency took hold.
The Hetch Hetchy struggle also demonstrated that organizations and strong coalitions were essential for success. The long battle had been spearheaded by private environmental groups that consisted of dedicated volunteers willing to write letters, stuff envelops, and give of their organizing ability and occasionally their money. When William Colby determined that the Sierra Club was too local and splintered, he formed the Society for the Preservation of National Parks, which engaged a national constituency. After 1913 the society disappeared, but the idea did not. No sooner did Congress authorize the National Park Service than Mather and Albright recognized the need for a private support organization that would fund studies, define objectives, and take positions that a public agency would find difficult. The result was the National Parks Association (now the National Parks and Conservation Association), founded in 1917 and headed by Robert SterlingYard, a New York journalist pressed into service by his friend Stephen Mather. Yard's personality was too acerbic and abrasive for government work; thus he joined with Charles D. Walcott and Henry B. F Mcfarland to form this support organization. 15 The association fought to preserve parks as undisturbed natural refuges, defending them from the many interests that sought political gain or economic opportunity. This mission remains today.
In 1916 the new park agency had a difficult job. The Bureau of Reclamation had little respect for national park landscapes. In Glacier National Park, created in 1910, the enabling act allowed the Bureau of Reclamation to enter the park and develop and maintain reclamation projects. The bureau soon claimed its right, damming Shelbourne Lake within the park. Given free rein by Secretary Lane, the bureau set its sights on St. Mary's Lake, arguing that a darn would assist farmers in both Montana and Canada. Much later, the Army Corps of Engineers, not to be left out of the reclamation feast, proposed the Glacier View Dam, which would plug the north fork of the Flathead River and submerge some 20,000 acres of the most primitive lands within Glacier Park.' 6 But by this time, the new National Park Service was active, and Park Director Newton Drury protested. It was just one of numerous attempts by irrigation and flood control interests to penetrate the parks. Enough was enough, for the loss of Shelbourne Lake had already offered an example of what should be avoided if American national parks were to remain showplaces of natural environments. A new, committed agency, with many of its leaders tested in the crucible of Hetch Hetchy, thwarted the ambitions of the bureau and the corps.
In the i9i9 "Report of the Director of the National Park Service," written by Albright and endorsed by Mather, the agency identified the "menace of irrigation projects."The agency began to define its principles. Water storage was inappropriate in Yellows tone, Glacier, and other parks because of the destruction of natural environments, creating artificial landscapes and a general eyesore. But there was a loftier question at stake regarding the parks and the nation. Albright did not shirk from asking it: "Is there not some place in this great Nation of ours where lakes can be preserved in their natural stat
e; where we and all generations to follow us can enjoy the beauty and charm of mountain waters in the midst of primeval forests?" 17
Secretary Lane did not receive such challenging questions gracefully. The secretary saw the legacy of Hetch Hetchy as a precedent for invasion of the parks. He was an irrigation man, aided by another San Franciscan of like mind, Assistant Secretary Alexander Vogelsang. Lane subscribed to the idea that man ought to dominate and control nature. Water running unchecked to the sea represented waste. When Lane gave the commencement address at Brown University, he revealed his resource philosophy. "Every tree is a challenge to use," pronounced the secretary, "and every pool of water and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies. We must pierce them and make them serve. The sinful rivers we must curb."18
The showdown between Secretary Lane and Park Director Stephen Mather came in Yellowstone National Park's Bechler Valley. Although its scenery was not as spectacular as that of Hetch Hetchy, it did share certain characteristics. It was isolated and few visitors had any knowledge of it. It sat in a national park. Most important, it could be dammed to create a reservoir for irrigation water, and in i9i9 that was exactly what Idaho sugar beet farmers hoped to do. Idaho representative Addison Smith subscribed to the idea that national parks were open to commercial invasion for a justifiable reason. In leading the farmers' fight, Smith maintained that the proposed Bechler Valley dam would do no noticeable damage to the scenic values of the park. Smith's arguments echoed those of Montana senator Thomas Walsh, who was busy trying to get Congress to authorize a low dam onYel- lowstone Lake to please his farming constituents. Both legislators believed that the gains would far outweigh the minor park incursions. In Congressman Smith's view, the Bechler Valley was nothing more than a miserable swamp, inhabited only by swarming mosquitoes and so isolated that nobody ever visited it. It was worthless land, unworthy of protection, since "absolutely nothing in the way of unusual scenery or other interesting features" existed in this corner of the park. Measured against the needs of struggling downstream farmers who had suffered a drought and crop loss, the relinquishment of some 8,000 acres of isolated park swampland seemed insignificant indeed. Whereas the proponents of the Hetch Hetchy dam had argued for the needs of urban women and children, Representative Smith conjured up an equally potent icon-the American farmer and his family. 19
Secretary Lane backed the Idaho farmers. He had fought hard for the Hetch Hetchy dam, and now he worked in behalf of these Rocky Mountain tillers of the soil. Within the Department of the Interior the lines were drawn. Stephen Mather stiffened his resolve, and both he and Albright coaxed, argued, and invoked "the memory of the `Retch Hetchy steal' of 1913."20 Albright wrote an eight-page memorandum defending the sanctity of Yellowstone, which Lane melodramatically tore in half and threw in the wastebasket.21 It appeared that Secretary Lane would fire the two leaders of the National Park Service, but quite fortuitously, from the park defenders' view, Lane left his post and Washington, accepting a more lucrative position with the Pan American Oil Company. In his place came John Barton Payne, who soon reversed his predecessor's position.
To simplify a complex battle, the Department of the Interior turned away both irrigation proposals to place dams inYellowstone National Park, and by 1923 they disappeared. Secretary Lane faced determined opposition in the very persons he had recruited to run the National Park Service. Mather and Albright had risked their positions to uphold the sanctity of Yellowstone Park.
The National Park Service did not stand alone. In the BechlerValley fight, the National Parks Association, under the leadership of Robert SterlingYard, developed arguments denied to a federal agency. For instance,Yard suggested that these clever farmers had organized as irrigation districts and intended "to sell national park water," since they would really need it only in drought years.Yard portrayed the farmers not as struggling individual families but as enterprising Mormon communities banding together to capture a valuable federal resource. Capitalizing on a widespread prejudice against Mormons, Yard noted that "strong political influences in Utah will get behind the Fall River Basin Bill at its next appearance in Congress.."22 Like its Hetch Hetchy predecessor, the Society for the Preservation of National Parks, and unlike an official government agency, the new association could engage in vigorous debate. This debate was not always objective, and Yard was not above belittling the interests of farm folks for what he considered the nation's greater need for primitive recreation. In a sense the Yellowstone dam controversy represented the triumph of East and West Coast elites over the rural interests of people who had to make a living from their environment. As with Hetch Hetchy, the issue was a matter of priorities. Were the resources of Yellowstone to be exclusively the domain of tourists, or were the needs of farmers to be respected and the local economy encouraged?23 In Yellowstone, the tourists prevailed.
Hetch Hetchy remained in the background of the Yellowstone conflict, muted yet significant. When The Outlook magazine editor Lyman Abbott first broke the dam story in 1920, he captioned his account "Another Hetch Hetchy."What followed was a Soo-word editorial describing theYellowstone situation, but not one mention of Hetch Hetchy. One can only presume he believed that the Hetch Hetchy fight was so familiar to his readership that explanation was unnecessary and that a mere reference to the famed battle was sufficient to alert the reader to another invasion.24 When geographer Michael J.Yochim concluded his account of the Yellowstone Park dam battles, he suggested that the fight could not have been won without the example of Hetch Hetchy. The Raker Act, though hardly an easy victory for San Francisco, showed that a national treasure could be lost. "Yosemite provided an illustration of what not to do inYellowstone."25
While the National Park Service fought to retain an undevelopedYellow- stone, in Yosemite National Park it sought to minimize the impact of the Hetch Hetchy construction. At issue was whether San Francisco, having won the right to inundate the valley, would extend its hegemony over one-third of Yosemite National Park. Whether disagreement occurred over pleasure boating, trail building, construction cleanup, or something else, the true issue was power. Would San Francisco or the National Park Service control the northern section of Yosemite National Park? The city believed that the conditions of the Raker Act gave it control of the reservoir, especially since it owned the land beneath the water. Furthermore, because of the paramount issue of sanitation and public health, the city argued that it must control the high-country watershed of the Tuolumne River.
Also in question was whether the National Park Service would demand that San Francisco fulfill its obligations under the Raker Act. The act was lengthy and complicated, and as San Francisco fought for passage, it made concessions it would come to regret. These concessions were so onerous that many in the bay city would come to question the wisdom of developing the Hetch HetchyValley. Costs mounted, and the National Park Service insisted on compliance with the stipulations of the act. Control was at issue as much as money. How extensive would be the damage to the flora and fauna of Yosemite National Park? Would the public have access to the watershed for recreational purposes? How would the conditions of the Raker Act play out on the ground? Who would have control the Tuolumne River watershed, a land mass of 420,000 acres? City Engineer O'Shaughnessy thought the Raker Act extended a right not only to darn the valley but also to control the vast Tuolumne watershed. He believed the 240,000 acres of park land (the other 18o,ooo acres was in Stanislaus National Forest) should be the city's preserve. The rangers of Yosemite National Park, on the other hand, believed the Raker Act merely granted the city the privilege of capturing the waters of the river in a reservoir. The city's jurisdiction ended at the water's edge. In addressing these issues, the National Park Service policy focused on minimizing the damage of the project while retaining public access to the land and water in question. San Francisco fought to maximize its control, excluding the public and making the watershed its private domain.
From San Francisco's perspective, it seemed thatYo
semite Park held all the cards. The city would have to conform to all regulations. It would be required to pay for the timber it cut along rights-of-way. No construction or work on park lands could commence until the city filed maps and permit applications and the secretary of the interior approved them. The public had to be given free use of roads constructed by San Francisco. The government would receive free use of the phone lines constructed and maintained by San Francisco. The Raker Act required the city to build an extensive trail system as well as a road circumventing the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Five years after passage of the act, the city commenced paying the United States government $15,ooo annually for 1o years.That fee increased to $20,000 in the next io years, and finally to $30,000 unless adjusted by Congress. San Francisco paid this "rental fee" to Yosemite Park but had no say in how the money would be spent. The city had to provide water for close-by park buildings and campgrounds. It also had to guarantee the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts abundant water, honoring their senior water rights. The city could not begin to use Hetch Hetchy water until it made full use of the waters of the Spring Valley Water Company, thus protecting the company and forcing the city to finally purchase Spring Valley in 1928. Furthermore, section 6, which prevented sale of Hetch Hetchy power to PG&E, was particularly galling.
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism Page 26
