The Roots of the Conservation Movement, 1890–1919 77
Document 68: John Muir, James Phelan, and the Battle over the
Flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley (1908-1913)John Muir was one of the most influential conservationists in the last decades of the nineteenth century and
the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1889 he became a major force advocating the development of
Yosemite as a national park, and in 1892 he helped found the Sierra Club, the first western-based hiking society.
A three-day camping trip that President Theodore Roosevelt took with Muir in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
of eastern California in 1903 made a deep impression on Roosevelt and was influential in shaping government
policies concerning wilderness and wildlife. Many believe Roosevelt set aside 148 million acres of forest reserve
land, in addition to establishing the first National Wildlife Refuge in 1903 and pioneering the federal role in
conservation, partly as a result of his relationship with Muir.
When it was proposed that the Hetch Hetchy Valley be flooded to build a reservoir to supply water for the
city of San Francisco, Muir launched a fight to save the valley. Although the federal government gave the Hetch
Hetchy to San Francisco in 1913, the Muir-led struggle galvanized the nascent conservation movement.
James Phelan, mayor of San Francisco from 1897 to 1902, minimized the aesthetics of the valley in making
his plea for its flooding.I am anxious that the Yosemite National
Park may be saved from all sorts of commercial-
ism and marks of man’s work other than the
roads, hotels, etc., required to make its wonders
and blessings available. For as far as I have seen
there is not in all the wonderful Sierra, or indeed
in the world, another so grand and wonderful
block of Nature’s mountain handiwork.
There is now under consideration, as doubt-
less you well know, an application of San Fran-
cisco supervisors for the use of the Hetch-Hetchy
Valley and Lake Eleanor as storage reservoirs
for a city water supply. This application should,
I think, be denied, especially the Hetch-Hetchy
part, for this Valley... is a counterpart of Yosem-
ite, and one of the most sublime and beautiful
and important features of the Park, and to dam
and submerge it would be hardly less destruc-
tive and deplorable in its effect on the Park in
general than would be the damming of Yosemite
itself. For its falls and groves and delightful camp-
grounds are surpassed or equaled only in Yosem-
ite, and furthermore it is the hall of entrance to
the grand Tuolumne Canon, which opens a won-
derful way to the magnificent Tuolumne Mead-
ows, the focus of pleasure travel in the Park and
the grand central camp-ground. If Hetch-Hetchy
should be submerged, as proposed, to a depth of
one hundred and seventy-five feet, not only would
the Meadows be made utterly in accessible along
the Tuolumne but this glorious canon way to the
High Sierra would be blocked.black or dark gray smoke an unlawful act, pun-
ishable by fine. Such regulations are already
in force in New York, Cleveland, Milwaukee,
Toronto, Toledo, Indianapolis, Detroit, the Dis-
trict of Columbia, and numerous other cities.
The second step is to get the law enforced.
In every case, smoke is a preventable nui-
sance, and every smoking plant or locomotive is
a sign of wastefulness, and a disregard for the
rights of the public. The proprietor should be as
interested in abating the nuisance as his neigh-
bors, and it has been the experience of smoke-law
officials that men who have bitterly complained
at being forced to make improvements have after-
ward thanked the smoke-abating department for
the increased economy of the plant.Source: Frederick Law Olmsted et al., The Smoke Nuisance,
American Civic Association (Philadelphia) Series II, no. 1
(March 1908), pp. 4-7.