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Sierra Club Bulletin 



The same principle applies to parks remote from cities which have 

 been definitely set aside for the purpose of preserving for public enjoy- 

 ment scenery of especially precious and valuable sort, or especially 

 subject to injury by commercial exploitation. When it is proposed to 

 use such a park for a different purpose, the advocates of the new 

 project must bear the burden of proving that the new use will not 

 impair the scenery. 



This principle is the necessary complement to the principle of com- 

 bining park and water supply functions, if beauty of scenery is not to 

 be pushed to the wall at every point of conflict in detail by the more 

 obvious claims of utilitarian advantages. It was with these two prin- 

 ciples equally in mind that I addressed myself to the question of what 

 effect the Hetch Hetchy dam project would really have upon the quality 

 of the scenery; anxious to justify the use of the valley for water supply 

 if compatible with the park values, but determined not to shut my eyes 

 to any real injury if it should appear inevitable. 



THE YOSEMITE's DISTINCTIVE CHARM 



My conclusion is that the proposed reservoir would effect an enormous 

 injury to the scenery of the Hetch Hetchy Valley and a very serious 

 permanent loss in the total value of the Yosemite National Park for 

 the purposes it was created to serve. 



Some of the grounds of this conclusion I will state as briefly as I 

 can. In the first place, what my father wrote years ago about the 

 Yosemite scenery in general applies specifically to the scenery of the 

 Hetch Hetchy, namely: 



The distinctive charm of the scenery of the Yosemite does not de- 

 pend, as it is a vulgar blunder to suppose, on the greatness of its walls 

 and the length of its little early summer cascades, the height of certain 

 of its trees, the reflections in its pools, and such other matters as can be 

 entered in statistical tables, pointed out by guides and represented within 

 picture frames. So far, perhaps, as can be told in a few words, it lies in 

 the rare association with the grandeur of its rocky elements, of brooks 

 flowing quietly through the ferny and bosky glades of very beautifully 

 disposed great bodies, groups and clusters of trees. In this respect, its 

 charm is greater than that of any other scenery that, with much search- 

 ing, I have found. There is nothing in the least like it in the Canon of 

 the Colorado, sometimes foolishly compared with the Yosemite. I felt 

 the charm of the Yosemite much more at the end of a week than at the 

 end of a day, much more after six weeks when the cascades were nearly 

 dry than after one week, and when, after having been in it, off and on, 

 several months, I was going out, I said, 'T have not yet half taken it in." 



To substitute an expanse of water for the sylvan landscape of the 

 valley floor would wipe out of existence that apparently minor element 

 of the Yosemite scenery which makes its charm unique in all the world. 

 It would change it into a sort of imitation of the scenery to be found 

 in certain sea coast fiords, not without great impressiveness indeed, but 

 a radically different and far less rare and precious thing than is the 

 existing scenery. 



