Hetch Hetchy and the Environmental Cause

On our fourth full day in Yosemite National Park we ventured out of the overpopulated Yosemite Valley to the other valley of Yosemite--Hetch Hetchy.  That valley is  not full of people but of water, thanks to the needs and wants of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire.  In the late 19th  century, James Phelan, a San Francisco politician, including for a while Mayor, decided that SF needed a new source of water in order to grow its population and stature as a major US economic force.  He set his sights on Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite, which he thought would be an ideal water source if the Tuolomne River were dammed and the valley turned into a reservoir.   Environmentalists,  including the newly formed Sierra Club and the famous John Muir, fought this project for over 20 years  until they lost their support in Washington after Wilson's election to the presidency and his appointment of  another SF politician, Walter Fisher, as Secretary of the Interior, who supported building the dam.  Federal law, the Raker Bill, was enacted in 1913 to create the reservoir for SF in Hetch Hetchy. Construction of the O'Shaughnessy Dam was completed in 1923 and Hetch Hetchy to this day remains flooded, notwithstanding efforts to have it restored.

The struggle between preserving the environment and exploitation by people of natural resources is one that continues to this day in many forms.  The Hetch Hetchy debate concerned the tension between the desire for growth and the desire to preserve the beauty of nature.  Today, the debates seem, to me at least, to concern  a more serious tension for the desire to provide energy to insatiable demand of an overgrown world population and the need to keep the environment healthy so that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will not suffer more deleterious effects from pollution and global climate change.  Although certain powers in SF in the early 20th century wanted more energy for that city, as even the New York Times recognized then, SF did not need the water/power supply that the Hetch Hetchy project would deliver.  Other sources were available at the time which did not involve destroying part of a national park, but also did not supply as much as wanted by those who sought to push the growth of SF.  Ironically, the city of SF has not grown much since the horrible 1906 earthquake and fire. The population then was about 400,000 and currently is about 800,000, a mere doubling in 105 years.  Where the growth has occurred, however,  is in the overall SF/ Bay Area, which increased almost twelvefold from a population of 600,000 in 1906 to about 7.15 million today.  Hetch Hetchy supplies water to about 2 million people in SF/Bay Area.

I spend more time than I should worrying about the legacy of the decimation of resources  for my children and grandchildren.  Overfarming, overfishing, air pollution, water pollution seem to me to be serious environmental concerns.  However,  I need to remind myself that the early Sierra Club members and John Muir were perhaps prescient about unrestrained use of natural resources even if the long term impact of the choices pushed by James Phelan and his ilk were not as obvious at the time.  By flooding Hetch Hetchy, Phelan got his wish of tremendous growth in the SF/Bay Area in line with belief that natural resources of the United States were endless and could supply huge growth.  Now that we feel the pinch of that growth around the world with a world population projected to be 7 billion this year and continue to grow to over 10 billion by the end of the century, perhaps I need to give their position more credit.  People should not have messed with  "nature's . . . temples" (John Muir).

Hetch Hetchy today is remote and quite beautiful even with the water where the valley should be.  However as you will see from the historic pictures (many by Herbert Gleason) that follow and my own pictures of it currently, Hetch Hetchy was indeed a rival to Yosemite Valley in grandeur and beauty before it was flooded.

View of Valley floor with Kolana Rock

View from O'Shaughnessy Dam today

Herbert W. Gleason photograph

View of Kolana Rock today

Wamapo Falls then

Wamapo Falls now

Hetch Hetchy Valley 1908 or before

Hetch Hetchy today

O'Shaughnessy Dam

Way Down Upon the Ahwahnee

For many years I have dreamed of staying at the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite.  When MCA was my client and it owned Yosemite Park and Curry Company, the former concessionaire of the Ahwahnee,  I was frequently told that it was difficult, nay impossible, to get a reservation at the Hotel unless you had pull and money.  I had little of either at the time so I tucked the dream away for another day.

Last year, when we came to Yosemite in June 2010 after my chemotherapy ended, we wound up eating at the Ahwahnee Hotel for lunch a few times.  At that point we hatched our plot to bring our entire family to Yosemite the following June for a wilderness vacation.  I got onto the current concessionaire's, DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite, website, to discover that my husband and I could stay at the Ahwahnee for an exorbitant price that we could afford (sort of) if I got a bonus this year and I did not want to plan to have any money in the future!

One year later I am sitting here as I type this entry on the Ahwahnee grounds in a cottage completed in 1927. From the cottage and the hotel we enjoy fabulous views of Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, the Merced River and Glacier Point.  Everything is wonderful -- except for the people.  Yosemite Valley has record water flow this year which has yielded record crowds.  Today, after raining last night and this morning,  hordes of campers from Curry Village and other campsites have poured in the Ahwahnee for shelter and food.  And the Merced flooded in Housekeeping Camp so people are displaced from their lodging.  Where are they going?  Apparently also to the Ahwahnee.  The valet parking was 50 cars deep at lunchtime as we waited for friends to meet us at the Ahwahnee Bar.

It is crowded all over Yosemite Valley with traffic jams reminiscent of the 405 at home.  The hybrid buses that you are encouraged to take to cut down on pollution in the park are crammed with people, some of whom have not showered for a while.  It makes the buses of cities at rush hour seem desirable.

At breakfast the other day, the person at the next table loudly exhorted people at his table, whom he apparently had just met, to have a wonderful time in Yosemite, which is a "piece of heaven on earth".  The man to whom he made this comment got angry and offended, replying that it was sacrilege to compare anything on earth to heaven.  My thought was to wonder whether there would be as many crowds in heaven.

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life." John Muir

Today, John Muir, it would be tens of thousands, all piled in the small area of the Yosemite Valley.  But even with the crowds, this place is magical and eye opening, both for its natural beauty and its history.

You can read about the history of the Ahwahnee here and here.  The hotel opened in 1927 as a place of decorum for a certain type of traveler.  One of the people working here told us this morning, as we sat in the Mural Room off the Grand Lounge, that the original application to work for the Curry Company at the Ahwahnee told people if they could not smile for ten hours straight, no need to apply.  Another story I like about the Ahwahnee is the following report (whether it's true I do not know given that other parts of this source blog were challenged in the blog's comments):

Prior to the availability of condenser units, at the beginning of each winter, the hotel staff would go out to Mirror Lake (about 1.5 miles away) and cut 500 pound (225 kg) blocks of ice from the frozen lake. These blocks would be hauled back to the hotel and stored under straw and sawdust. When the refrigerators needed "refilling", the blocks were lifted by a winch and slid into these doorways situated above each chamber. Each of these doorways led to compartments big enough for ten 500-pound blocks of ice.

Ahwahnee Hotel in the past

Ahwahnee Hotel today

Grand Lobby is behind pillars

Another view of Ahwahnee

Cottage at Ahwahnee