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

Robert W. Righter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2005

In the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco desperately needed reliable supplies of water and electricity. Its mayor, James Phelan, pressed for the damming of the Tuolumne River in the newly created Yosemite National Park, setting off a firestorm of protest. For the first time in American history, a significant national opposition arose to defend and preserve nature, led by John Muir and the Sierra Club, who sought to protect what they believed was the right of all Americans to experience natural beauty, particularly the magnificent mountains of the Yosemite region. Yet the defenders of the valley, while opposing the creation of a dam and reservoir, did not intend for it to be maintained as wilderness. Instead they advocated a different kind of development--the building of roads, hotels, and an infrastructure to support recreational tourism. Using articles, pamphlets, and broadsides, they successfully whipped up public opinion against the dam. Letters from individuals began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and major newspapers published editorials condemning the dam. The fight went to the floor of Congress, where politicians debated the value of scenery and the costs of western development. Ultimately, passage of the passage of the Raker Act in 1913 by Congress granted San Francisco the right to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A decade later the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal, was completed. Yet conflict continued over the ownership of the watershed and the profits derived from hydroelectrocity. To this day the reservoir provides San Francisco with a pure and reliable source of drinking water and an important source of power. Although the Sierra Club lost this battle, the controversy stirred the public into action on behalf of national parks. Future debates over dams and restoration clearly demonstrated the burgeoning strength of grassroots environmentalism. In a narrative peopled by politicians and business leaders, engineers and laborers, preservationists and ordinary citizens, Robert W. Righter tells the epic story of the first major environmental battle of the twentieth century, which reverberates to this day.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

From 1901 to 1913, John Muir and the newly formed Sierra Club fought against the construction of a giant dam that would flood the majestic Hetch Hetchy Valley, in Yosemite National Park, and, in the process, built the first nationwide environmental movement. The burgeoning city of San Francisco saw the dam as a solution to its chronic water problems (surrounded on three sides by salt water, it obtained all its fresh water from a monopoly) and as a way to generate cheap electricity. The environmentalists eventually lost the battle, but Hetch Hetchy became the rallying cry for many future victories, including the passing of the National Parks Act, in 1916. Muir's opponents could display a hysterical anthropomorphism—one said, "The mountains are our enemies"—but Righter's approach is unfailingly evenhanded and illuminates how the opposing ideologies formed in the Hetch Hetchy fight became the source of future environmental debates.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist

In this meticulously researched history, Righter examines the transformation of Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley from Sierra Nevada refuge to modern-day reservoir. Presented in the past as a fight between conservationists and big business, the Hetch Hetchy battle was actually over the valley's future as a site for water storage or a place to develop lucrative nature tourism. By the late 1890s, San Francisco politicians decided that the city should have a municipally owned water system, and that the water should come from a source in the Sierra Nevada. By 1901, San Francisco mayor James Phelan applied for reservoir rights in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Although the application was denied, opinions changed in the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire. Righter employs dozens of characters--from naturalist John Muir to newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst--and follows the story from the completion of the dam in 1934 to the 1998 movement to restore Hetch Hetchy to create an engrossing chapter in the history of the American West. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195149475
• ISBN-13: 978-0195149470
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Water Supply & Land Use

More About the Author

Robert W. Righter is Research Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. He has published seven books on national park subjects and wind energy. His latest is WINDFALL: WIND ENERGY IN AMERICA TODAY, scheduled for release in September, 2011. His specialties are American West and Environmental history. He splits his time between Dallas, Texas, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Research and Writing, September 13, 2005

By 

R. R. Costas Jr. (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (Hardcover)

This is the only book I have ever read on the Hetch Hetchy matter and I don't think I would have to read another one. Although the author reveals himself as more of an environmentalist in the sense that he would have like to have seen the valley preserved, I felt he was very, very fair in describing the motivations, merits and flaws of both sides and debunking the myth that this was solely enviromentalism vs progress. His research led him to the conclusion that even John Muir was not looking to keep the valley in a pristine state. He and his followers thought that such beauty should be experienced and shared by everyone and they wanted to develop the valley for tourism, probably of the kind we see today in the Yosemite Valley. Other themes were public power vs. privately owned utilities and municipal water systems vs. private water companies that were supplying the city prior to the HH dam being built. All these debates were also taking place in the backdrop of Teddy Roosevelt's progressivism, the recent birth of the National Forest and National Park systems and the devastation of the 1906 SF earthquake and fire (for which there wasn't enough water to successfully fight).

The author manages to tell his even story in a relatively short 244 pages, including interesting chapters on the legacy of the HH controversy and the talk of restoring the valley someday, a notion which I consider very far-fetched given the costs of replacing the dam's water as well as the hydroelectric power it produces. Pleasant as the sight of the valley would be, in today's world of fighting for every public dollar and the pressure to build more electric generation, I can't imagine we would agree to this. The author admits as much, but applauds the fact that it is at least talked about.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The battle over Hetch Hetchy, told myth-free, June 18, 2006

By 

S. J. Snyder "De gustibus non disputandum" (Various, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (Hardcover)

Note/question: Are a certain breed of modern environmentalists giving my review "unhelpful" ratings because of the "myth-free" comment (which is true), or what?

The biggest myth, and one that I'll admit was in my head, was that John Muir and the early Sierra Club wanted to preserve Hetch Hetchy as wilderness, with all the ideas of wilderness that we have today, whether post-Aldo Leopold or post-Wilderness Act.

Not true.

They envisioned development of the whole area, just somewhat less intensely than Yosemite Valley. In fact, a number of Sierrans openly favored building a road **up the Tuolumne Valley to the Meadows!** (Others favored building the Yosemite Valley road further up the Merced, then turning it left toward the Tuolumne Meadows as well.)

In short, to some fair degree, the battle over whether or not to damn Hetch Hetchy was a split between the "conversationist" and "preservationist" wings of early 20th century environmentalists. A minority of Sierrans supported damning Hetch Hetchy, in fact.

Meanwhile, the whole battle moved beyond environmental issues and definitions to pushing for public utilities, and San Francisco was served by both private water and private electricity at this time.

One can see the makings of an epic conflict that crossed the desks of multiple Interior secretaries before being hammered out in Congress.

And Robert Righter tells this story in detail, giving full play to San Francisco's side, including today, ever since Interior Secretary Donald Hodel first broached the idea of dam removal and brought Hetch Hetchy's history back to daylight.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic of environmental history, April 12, 2005

By 

J. Sam Moore Jr. (El Paso, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (Hardcover)

Robert W. Righter has extended his reputation as a leading American environmental historian by this informative and well written account of the building of the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park in the early 1900's. He is candid and even handed in admitting that there were and are no easy answers in this complex history of building a dam in a national park. This book follows his earlier and acclaimed book (Crucible for Conservation, The Struggle for Grand Teton National Park) which contains the compelling story of the establishment of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in which the issue was whether the Park as a contiguous and viable entity would ever be established over the objections of local and regional political and other interests.