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Water and Power for San Francisco from Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park

by MARTIN S. VILAS, A. M., Member of the Bars of California, Vermont and Washington.

Copyrighted 1915 by MARTIN SAMUEL VILAS

UNSOLICITED STATEMENTS

Of U. S. Senator Elect and Ex-Mayor Phelan, Congressman Raker and San Francisco Officials as to this Article

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 14, 1914.

I can assure you that your clean, clear presentation of the matter was admirable and much appreciated.

JOHN E. RAKER.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., February 4, 1914.

I think it was a valuable contribution to the data on that subject and indicates a considerable study upon your part.

ANDREW J. GALLAGHER.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., February 2, 1914.

J. S. DUNNIGAN.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., January 29, 1914.

I ... feel that you are entitled to considerable praise for the concise and clear manner in which you have covered a very comprehensive subject.

WM. MCCARTHY.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., January 29, 1914.

I read with much interest and satisfaction your very comprehensive and accurate article on the Hetch-Hetchy.

JAMES D. PHELAN.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., January 26, 1914.

I beg to compliment you on the clearness and conciseness with which you have stated many of the controversial points involved in same. I have had so much of it in the past year and I had to take up so many angles of the conflict that your resum? is decidedly refreshing.

M. M. O'SHAUGHNESSY.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., January 29, 1914.

ALEXANDER T. VOGELSANG.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., February 6, 1914.

I trust that the article will have a very wide circulation, for it cannot but help convince every fair minded individual not only that San Francisco's application for rights has not been hastily considered but fair play demanded the grant.

Speaking for myself, I thank you very much for your kindly interest in the matter and for your very careful and comprehensive article.

HOW THE RAKER BILL AFFECTS YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, SAN FRANCISCO, AND THE REST OF CALIFORNIA

Facts Regarding Mountain Supply

History of City's Fight for Pure and Adequate Water

BENEFITS TO BE DERIVED

Bay Counties and Irrigation Districts Provided for In National Grant

The Raker Bill, named for John E. Raker of Modoc county, Cal., a member of Congress, was reported unanimously by the House Committee on the Public Lands at the special session of Congress in the summer of 1913, after a hearing occupying several days, and under its recommendation passed the House. This bill was reported favorably by the Senate Committee on the Public Lands, and, after a hard fought contest, occupying a week on the floor of the Senate, passed that body December 6th, 1913, by a vote of 43 to 25. It received the approval of President Wilson and became a law on December 19, 1913.

The enactment of this bill ended a continuous effort on the part of San Francisco, covering a period of many years, to obtain the legal right to take water from Hetch-Hetchy. It marked the end of a contest, spirited and hard fought, which was participated in by the magazines and press the country over, and in which the great majority of publications outside of California opposed the plan of San Francisco.

As this legislation affords legal opportunity for a water project primarily for domestic use, which is in itself a signal and notable work of engineering; as it affects vitally and strongly the irrigation interests of a state having a length of about 775 miles and a land surface greater than the combined areas of the six New England States, of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Ohio--a State which James Bryce characterized as an empire within itself; as it gives a State a very important easement, likely to be enduring, in a national park sharing alone with the great Yellowstone National Park in distinctiveness and notoriety; as it is designed to provide the legal means of furnishing water and much power for the next 100 years for a rapidly growing metropolitan section, now more numerously peopled than any other west of Chicago, the Raker Bill and its accessories are of national interest.

For the foregoing reasons inquiry is made:

First--What is Hetch-Hetchy, and what, if any, are the present holdings and interests of San Francisco in the Yosemite National Park?

Second--What is the Raker Bill?

Third--What will be the operative effects of the Raker Bill on San Francisco and the rest of California outside the Yosemite National Park?

Fourth--What will be the operative effects of the Raker Bill on the Yosemite National Park?

Until the agitation connected with obtaining water for San Francisco brought in the name of Hetch-Hetchy, the writer supposed Hetch-Hetchy to be probably the name of some Indian chief, some new brand of cigars or some noted trotting horse. Possibly some of those who read this article are still nearly as ignorant as was the writer then.

Hetch-Hetchy is the name of a valley through which flows the Tuolumne River, and has tributary to it a watershed comprising 459 square miles. It lies entirely in Tuolumne County, California, entirely in the Yosemite National Park, of which it is the northern portion, and about 165 miles from San Francisco.

The Yosemite National Park contains about 1500 square miles. Hetch-Hetchy Valley is separated from the Yosemite Valley by a mountain range having a mean elevation of over 8500 feet, and distant from that valley about thirty-five miles by mountain trail. The floor of the valley is between 3000 and 4000 feet in altitude, is level and grass covered, and two or three miles long and nearly half a mile wide. It is surrounded by steep cliffs, out of which extend deep gorges. Just back of Hetch-Hetchy is a gorge a mile deep and one and a half miles wide. The sides of the valley are granite and very steep and precipitous, rising to a height of between 2000 and 5000 feet in different places. The valley is divided into two parts by a large ridge of rocks extending nearly across the middle. The upper end of it is a high, dry area, covered with tall pine trees, varying between 200 and 300 feet high, and with live oak and other kinds of trees, thus forming a natural park. The grasses, shrubs, flowers and trees are beautiful. Several distinguished naturalists have pronounced the natural growth as very unusual. There are a greater variety of trees and larger oaks in the Hetch-Hetchy Valley than in the Yosemite.

The area tributary to Hetch-Hetchy is very rough. Edmund A. Whitman, a lawyer of Boston and president of the Society for the Protection of National Parks; who has several times visited Hetch-Hetchy, in his testimony before the House Committee on the Public Lands last summer, stated:

"I cannot attempt to describe to you the character of the country. It is some of the roughest God ever made. You do not find little places here and there with grass and water, but the largest part of the country is the roughest sort, where camping is as impossible as it would be on the top of this table. Camping and the use of the park reduces itself to one thing--the feed of horses. There are only three places in the entire park where you can take care of horses."

Hetch-Hetchy Valley is difficult of access. Because of the high, rough country surrounding it but few people visit it. Thus while 6000 or 7000 people visit the Yosemite Valley each year, less than 300 visit Hetch-Hetchy Valley. The valley, difficult to reach in summer, is rendered almost inaccessible as soon as the early snows begin to fall, and in winter is enshrouded in four or five feet of snow.

The summer season in that high altitude is short, and rendered shorter than the ordinary in Hetch-Hetchy by the cooling effect of the mountain streams, almost icy cold, and by the surrounding mountain peaks, snow-capped except for a small part of the year.

The Tuolumne River rises on the eastern side of California among the highest crests of the Sierras and for five or six miles flows through a meadow, but during the next twenty miles drops 3000 feet, in which distance some of the falls in the river are beautiful and picturesque. Next it flows for about two miles through Hetch-Hetchy Valley, then becomes a rushing mountain torrent for twenty miles more, and finally empties into the San Joaquin River in Stanislaus County, almost directly east of the southern end of San Francisco Bay.

Lake Eleanor and Cherry Valley are northwest of Hetch-Hetchy. Lake Eleanor, distant about eight miles, is approximately 1000 feet higher than Hetch-Hetchy. Cherry Valley is distant about twelve miles and is approximately 1000 feet higher than Eleanor. Cherry Valley has tributary to it 114 square miles of territory, all in the Stanislaus National Park. Lake Eleanor and the seventy-nine square miles tributary to it are entirely in the Yosemite National Park. The outlets of Cherry Valley and of Lake Eleanor empty into the Tuolumne River several miles nearer the San Joaquin than Hetch-Hetchy.

A report of the State Geologist of California in 1879 suggested Hetch-Hetchy Valley and Lake Eleanor as possible sources of water supply for the city of San Francisco.

In 1883 a corporation was formed to supply water to San Francisco from the sources of the Tuolumne River. Filings were made and considerable work put in. In 1901 the City Engineer was directed to examine the available sources of water supply for San Francisco. He investigated fourteen different sources and under suggestion of the reclamation service spent about ,000 in detailed investigation of the sources of the Tuolumne, with a view to utilization at Hetch-Hetchy and Lake Eleanor. That was before the section was taken into the Yosemite National Park in 1905.

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