The defenders of Hetch Hetchy Valley first wanted to save the valley from the dam. If they succeeded, specific plans for its use would come later.Yet in 1907 the Sierra Club officially endorsed road construction to the valley. In 1909 they restated this commitment, noting thatYosemite could be a tourist "gold mine" and Hetch Hetchy was one of "its most priceless attractions." Moreover, the nature lovers suggested a road tour of Yosemite National Park that would seem a sacrilege today. Historian Marguerite Shaffer defines tour, from the Latin tornis, as a "circular journey." The Sierra Club advocated construction of a circular road, somewhat like that of Yellowstone, beginning at Yosemite Valley, going up the Merced River and over Tuolumne Pass, and dropping into the meadows. From Tuolumne Meadows this scenic drive would descend throughTuolumne Canyon to the Hetch HetchyValley, creating an unexcelled mountain drive connecting the three most notable scenic features of the park: Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne Meadows, and the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The Colby Brief advocated a road from Hetch Hetchy to Tuolumne Meadows. In 1908 Marion Randall Parsons suggested a "possible cation highway from Yosemite to Hetch Hetchy." Two years later Sierra Club member Lucy Washburn enjoyed a horseback trip fromYosemite Valley to the Tuolumne watershed but then suggested that "when our Government shall have built a road over the pass, as is perfectly feasible, and some hostelry shall perch among its beetling snowy crags, the thousands who now see only the Yosemite Valley below it will never fail to see this wild Alpine glory."4S The club, in short, favored development in the hope that more Americans might come to the valley for recreation and inspiration. Joseph L. Sax observed that "the preservationist is not an elitist who wants to exclude others . . . he is a moralist who wants to convert them."49 Certainly this was true of Muir, who saw the mountains as a leisure resource and a place of conver- sion.We forget that the original mission statement of the Sierra Club (1892) was to "explore, enjoy and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast."50 [Italics mine]
The strongest evidence of the valley defenders intent to develop the valley may be found in the Colby Brief, written by William Colby as a critique of the Freeman Report.51 Colby argued thatYosemite, and by inference all national parks, should be inviolate-indeed, should be sacred spaces. However, he did not equate wilderness with sacred spaces. He saw no contradiction between special places of nature and tourism. Colby contended that the future value of tourism would outstrip that of water. In So or ioo years "the need of the Nation for Hetch Hetchy Valley and the extensive camp and hotel sites on its floor will be greater than the need of San Francisco for its use as a reservoir site." He envisioned a developed valley, complete with hotels, restaurants, campground, trails, horses, and fishing opportunities, all within the lush valley and the ever present cliffs and waterfalls. To emphasize the potential commodity value, Colby looked to Switzerland, where the Alps were "practically unfrequented at the commencement of the 19th Century and now its visitors are counted by millions.."52
Clearly, the accepted tourist model was Switzerland. Scenic mountain regions in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains were often labeled the "Switzerland of America." When religion professor William Bade researched his biblical interests in Europe, he took time to study tourism in Switzerland. When he returned to the United States to testify in i9io, congressmen listened intently because he argued the tourist-dollar value of Hetch Hetchy. Switzerland, long considered to contain the epitome of mountain scenery, was the benchmark by which tourists judged American landscapes.The Alps, while spectacular, had no waterfalls comparable to those of Yosemite or Hetch Hetchy valleys. The Matterhorn met its match with the Grand Teton range of Wyoming. Allen Chamberlain, in arguing for campgrounds, hotels, and conveniences in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, reminded his readers that "Switzerland regards its scenery as a money-producing asset to the extent of some two hundred million dollars." The message was clear: Although the American West held scenery comparable or superior to that of the Swiss Alps, tourism brought in a fraction of the Swiss take. At the very time Californians should be developing and advertising the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a tourist attraction, San Francisco had bamboozled the state into its water agenda.53
If Hetch Hetchy Valley had escaped the fight unscathed, what would it look like today? If we could look down on the valley from LeConte Point, in all likelihood we would see a near clone of Yosemite Valley Perhaps there would be more car camping and fewer luxury hotels, such as the Ahwahnee. Yet there would be motels, eateries, and a considerable infrastructure to service the traveling public. Traffic jams might not exist, but automobiles would be very much in evidence, allowing visitors to approach scenic areas with a minimum of walking.
Of course we must consider the possibility that the Colby Brief was an insincere ploy to mask the club's true wilderness agenda-a subterfuge to curry support by emphasizing development and supporting commercial tourism.54 Perhaps Colby, Chamberlain, Muir, and others had to make repugnant compromises, with the thought that they could be reversed at a later date. However, in letters and strategy sessions, there is no evidence that the Sierra Club leadership attempted to hoodwink the public or Secretary Walter Fisher. The acceptance of roads and hotels was sincere-a realization of the changing nature of tourism and commodity conservation, not a planned strategy for the exigencies of the moment.
In fact, no one within the club or its friends argued against the Colby Brief. Bostonian Allen Chamberlain, who visited Hetch Hetchy in i9o9, had written in a 1910 issue of The Outlook that he favored extension of the present road nine miles and construction of hotels or at least tent cabins to open the valley. Chamberlain not only advocated opening Hetch Hetchy to tourism but also believed that all of the national parks must be made into "attractive vacation resorts." He wanted the American public to enjoy nature, but he also wanted to save the parks from commercialism. Unless the public became more aware of the parks, "selfish interests are likely to steal an important part of our birthright"55 Chamberlain understood, as did the preservationists, that the public needed mountains, but the mountains also needed the public. To enjoy mountain scenery, the public demanded roads. When Muir pronounced his famous dictum that "thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity," he freely admitted that they would get to the mountains by "means of good roads."56 We can only conclude that the defenders of Hetch Hetchy wished its scenery opened to mass tourism, using the Swiss model of access through technology.
If the Sierra Club position for development was clear, why have both scholars and the public believed that this was a wilderness controversy? Without question, the passionate leadership ofJohn Muir would suggest this interpretation. No American has been more associated with wilderness than Muir.When a young Muir dropped into the Hetch HetchyValley in 1871, he saw it as pure wilderness, and he described it as such, unaware of the cultural impact of the Miwok Indians. He relished the wilderness experience with artist and friend William Keith in 1895 and again in 1907. On an earlier occasion, he approached Hetch Hetchy by hiking down the Tuolumne Canyon. He described the rollicking river as well as the formidable boulderfilled gorge, with its horrendously difficult descent through a canyon wilderness that more than hinted at danger. These experiences, and the way he wrote of them, could easily convince the reader that Muir not only experienced wilderness but wished to retain it, as well. Muir was a prophet of wilderness, an evangelist who used the word at almost every opportunity. And yet he read the Colby Brief and did not challenge or change a word of it. In some respects the legendary Muir, the mythic Muir, was so clearly the spiritual leader of the Hetch Hetchy fight that the more practical, down-inthe-trenches William Colby has often been overlooked. So have the intentions of the valley defenders who accepted the idea of opening the valley to tourism and creating a mirror image of Yosemite Valley, in both its features and its concessions to boosterism, tourism, consumerism, and the domestication of nature. It was not that the valley defen
ders did not believe in the attributes of wildness, but that the valley was not the right place and 1913 was not the right time.
Because of Muir's warm embrace of a biocentric view of nature and his writings on "Lord Man," as he derisively referred to the arrogance of human beings, it is easy to believe that Muir and the defenders of Hetch Hetchy thought they were fighting for the rights of nature. This, I freely admit, is a myth of my own making. When I first began research, I was convinced that material abounded suggesting that Muir's campaign preceded Aldo Leopold's call for a new "land ethic," extending rights to the flora and fauna of the Hetch HetchyValley. However, none of the pamphlets, speeches, or testimony suggests that this was anything more than a fight for the rights of humans. Much as Muir believed in rights for nature and in a certain egalitarianism among all living creatures, I could find no evidence that he ever used such an argument for preserving the valley. In 1912 the American public was not prepared for such an expansion of ethics. Animal life and plant life were entitled to appreciation, but not ethical considerations or legal rights. As early as 1875 Muir wrote a friend that "to obtain a hearing on behalf of nature from any other standpoint than that of human use is almost impossible.."57 To argue for preservation of Hetch Hetchy on the basis of the rights of nature would challenge the accepted theological view that God created human beings to have dominion over all life on earth. Muir understood this, and even though he had often railed against the presumptions of "Lord Man," he was mindful that a biocentric view might alienate many traditional supporters. It was much safer to blame the greedy capitalists for the undoing of nature. The basis for saving the Hetch Hetchy Valley would not be ecological, although certainly there is a strain of stewardship in their arguments. At the philosophical center the rationale for protection from bulldozers and steam shovels would be the valley's usefulness to human beings in spiritual ways. Roderick Nash noted that when it came to politics and Hetch Hetchy, Muir "tempered his biocentricity" and "camouflaged his radical egalitarianism in more acceptable rhetoric centered on the benefits of nature for people.."5
Thus both Muir and the Colby Brief discounted any biocentric or "deep ecology" view Muir had been tarred by his enemies as a person devoid of compassion for humans. Mayor James Phelan testified before Congress that Muir would sacrifice his own family for the preservation of beauty. Presumably, nature affected him more emotionally than the thirsty children of San Francisco. To espouse his philosophy with Hetch Hetchy in mind would be self-defeating. However, one can argue that through Muir's eloquent writings and Colby's sincere but more practical efforts, there is an implied right of nature. Muir's chapter on Hetch Hetchy Valley in The Mountains of California hints at the possibility that to destroy the valley would be a crime, indeed a sin, against nature. Muir proclaimed his passion of attachment, not to a supernatural world, but rather to a natural one: "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man." In this impassioned peroration, Muir, by a stunning theological comparison, conveys on the valley an ethical right to exist.59
No ONE APPRECIATED Muir's eloquent words more than David Brower, and no one has taken the Hetch Hetchy legacy more to heart. Brower, perhaps the preeminent environmentalist of the second half of the twentieth century, carried on his river-dam battles with the memory of Hetch Hetchy close at hand. His first full-fledged fight occurred at Echo Park in the early 195os. At the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers, within Dinosaur National Monument, the Bureau of Reclamation determined to construct a high dam. The agency prepared to exercise a right guaranteed in 1938 with the establishment of the monument. With local support and the firm belief that every dam, private or public, encouraged prosperity, the bureau was unprepared for the fire of opposition that emerged from small environmental groups, kindled by concern for the national parks and monuments and fueled by the memory of Hetch Hetchy. 61) The parallels between Echo Park and the earlier battle were quite obvious, especially to Sierra Club leaders who determined to strike a lethal blow against the dam plans. David Brower emerged as the leader, a man steeped in the legacy of Hetch Hetchy. Brower never knew John Muir, but in many ways he was a carbon copy in his spirited defense of nature and the parks. Muir was a model not only as one who had spent his life in the pure enjoyment of the mountains but also as an elegant defender of nature. Brower was cut from the same cloth. He felt deeply the loss of Hetch Hetchy, and "he seemed to hear echoes of Muir resounding in the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers, calling him and the Club to act "61 They acted. Summoning all the energy the little club had, Brower led them in a campaign meant, in a sense, to make amends for the wrong of Hetch Hetchy. He would see that it did not happen again.
But Hetch Hetchy did not haunt David Brower alone. Harold Bradley had been a young man in 1913, but he remembered the fight well and even wrote a scolding letter to Norman Hapgood, editor of Collier's Weekly, for supporting San Francisco's position. Now, almost 40 years later, for six wonderful days he floated the Yampa River with his sons and, perhaps even more important, a movie camera. His film of a family adventure running the rapids, admiring the immense sandstone cliffs, and camping on the pristine sandy beaches-all destroyed and submerged under water if the Bureau of Reclamation built the dam-brought to life the beauty of a country almost as isolated as Hetch Hetchy in 1910. Bradley, whose father worked closely with Muir, must have felt a paternal presence as he made hundreds of friends for the dinosaur country through his film. The two fights were so similar, he reflected, "that the campaign literature on both sides might be interchanged, with the appropriate names added.."62
As the battle over the Echo Park dam proposal wore on, Brower became more and more determined that the error of Hetch Hetchy would not be repeated. To a Senate subcommittee, he testified that "if we heed the lesson learned from the tragedy of the misplaced dam in Hetch Hetchy, we can prevent a far more disastrous stumble in Dinosaur National Monument." But Brower knew, perhaps more than Muir, the power of images. The Sierra Club Bulletin soon featured photographs of Steamboat Rock, the Tiger Wall, and other features of the Echo Park area. Perhaps his most potent propaganda piece was the film Two Yosetnites. The film started with beautiful footage of Yosemite Valley. It then revealed "Little Joe" LeConte's still photographs of Hetch Hetchy Valley before it was stripped of vegetation in 1917, juxtaposed in stark contrast with Philip Hyde's photographs showing an inundated Hetch Hetchy Valley at low water. The late incarnation of the valley thus appeared as inudflats, tree stumps, and dust devils swirling about what Muir would call "the graveyard of Hetch Hetchy" No one could miss the message. Wilderness Society lobbyist Howard Zahniser carried the film with him as he circulated the halls of Congress, setting up his projector for any legislator who would take ii minutes to watch it. Another use of the Hetch Hetchy heritage came with the publication of Robert Cutter's Hetch Hetchy-Once Is Too Often. The slim book reached the 9,000 members of the Sierra Club as well as at least another i,ooo through special mailings.63
Echo Park did not become another Hetch Hetchy. By 1956 the Bureau of Reclamation abandoned its plans. Today one can visit Echo Park by rough road or, preferably, by raft either from the Lodore Canyon of the Green River or the Yampa River. A determined coalition of conservation organizations, undoubtedly motivated by the memory of Hetch Hetchy, fought and won. In the Echo Park controversy the sublime Sierra Nevada valley took on a new meaning. It was lost, yet in a way, it lived. A despondent John Muir had predicted that some good would come from the loss of Hetch Hetchy, and indeed it did.
The Echo Park struggle was as much the beginning as the end of dam controversies on the Colorado River. Well below the confluence of the Green River and Colorado River lay Glen Canyon. Spectacular but unknown, Glen Canyon was unprotected by any national park system designation. In their efforts to save Echo Park, David Brower and the environmentalists tacitly consented to a compromise in which Glen Canyon would be sacrificed to save Echo Park
. Brower deeply regretted that compromise for the rest of his life. It was, he remarked with remorse, a "flagrant betrayal, unequaled in the conservation history that sixty-eight years of Sierra Club Bulletins have recorded." Brower blamed himself, but realized the difficulty when faced with a huge bureaucracy that could manufacture plausible statistics and "hold press interviews faster than a true interpretation can overtake them."64 The defenders of Hetch Hetchy who endured the San Francisco publicity machine would nod their heads in agreement.
The Southwest's water and power seekers were not satisfied with the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. A growing population, particularly in Arizona and Southern California, placed pressure on politicians, who in turn encouraged a willing Bureau of Reclamation. In the i96os the ghost of Hetch Hetchy once again emerged in the form of bureau plans for the Marble Canyon dam and the Bridge Canyon dam. Neither Marble Canyon, just to the north of Grand Canyon National Park, nor Bridge Canyon, south of the national park, were protected by special status. However, both sites were strongly associated with the national park and were, geographically, part of the greater Grand Canyon. Again the specter of Hetch Hetchy emerged, and Brower prepared for battle. Sickened by the loss of Glen Canyon, he now had a chance at redemption by saving the Grand Canyon from the scourge of two more dams. On the other side was Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, a politician much beholden to his home state of Arizona. However, Udall was environmentally sensitive and had even noted the Hetch Hetchy fight in his popular environmental history, The Quiet Crisis. Hetch Hetchy Valley "was flooded out," wrote Udall, "but those who had fought a losing fight for the principles of park preservation served notice on the country that its outdoor temples would be defended with blood and bone."65 Of course, the lessons of history, even when one writes them, do not always in fluence one's action. Udall remained committed to supporting the determination of his Bureau of Reclamation director, Floyd Dominy, to raise the two high dams.
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism Page 28
