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?
I. What is Hetch-Hetchy, and what, if any are the present holdings and interests of San Francisco in the Yosemite National Park?
(1) 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.