Vol. VI. 



THE HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



San Francisco, January, 1908. 



By John Muir. 



No. 4. 



It is impossible to overestimate the value of wild 

 mountains and mountain temples as places for people 

 to grow in, recreation grounds for soul and body. They 

 are the greatest of our natural resources, God's best gifts, 

 but none, however high and holy, is beyond reach of 

 the spoiler. In these ravaging money-mad days monopo- 

 lizing San Francisco capitalists are now doing their best 

 to destroy the Yosemite Park, the most wonderful of 

 all our great mountain national parks. Beginning on the 

 Tuolumne side, they are trying with a lot of sinful in- 

 genuity to get the Government's permission to dam and 

 destroy the Hetch-Hetchy Valley for a reservoir, simply 

 that comparatively private gain may be made out of uni- 

 versal public loss, while of course the Sierra Club is 

 doing all it can to save the valley. The Honorable Sec- 

 retary of the Interior has not yet announced his decision 

 in the case, but in all that has come and gone nothing 

 discouraging is yet in sight on our side of the fight. 



As long as the busy public in general knew little or 

 nothing about the Hetch-Hetchy Valley, the few cun- 

 ning drivers of the damming scheme, working in dark- 

 ness like moles in a low-lying meadow, seemed confident 

 of success; but when light was turned on and the truth 

 became manifest that next to Yosemite, Hetch-Hetchy 

 is the most wonderful and most important feature of the 

 great park, that damming it would destroy it, render it 

 inaccessible, and block the way through the wonderful 

 Tuolumne Canon to the grand central campground in 

 the upper Tuolumne Valley, thousands from near and 



Copyright, 1908, Sierra Club. 



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