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Author: Robert W. Righter Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199882061 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
In the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco desperately needed reliable supplies of water and electricity. Its mayor, James Phelan, pressed for the damming of the Tuolumne River in the newly created Yosemite National Park, setting off a firestorm of protest. For the first time in American history, a significant national opposition arose to defend and preserve nature, led by John Muir and the Sierra Club, who sought to protect what they believed was the right of all Americans to experience natural beauty, particularly the magnificent mountains of the Yosemite region. Yet the defenders of the valley, while opposing the creation of a dam and reservoir, did not intend for it to be maintained as wilderness. Instead they advocated a different kind of development--the building of roads, hotels, and an infrastructure to support recreational tourism. Using articles, pamphlets, and broadsides, they successfully whipped up public opinion against the dam. Letters from individuals began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and major newspapers published editorials condemning the dam. The fight went to the floor of Congress, where politicians debated the value of scenery and the costs of western development. Ultimately, passage of the passage of the Raker Act in 1913 by Congress granted San Francisco the right to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A decade later the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal, was completed. Yet conflict continued over the ownership of the watershed and the profits derived from hydroelectrocity. To this day the reservoir provides San Francisco with a pure and reliable source of drinking water and an important source of power. Although the Sierra Club lost this battle, the controversy stirred the public into action on behalf of national parks. Future debates over dams and restoration clearly demonstrated the burgeoning strength of grassroots environmentalism. In a narrative peopled by politicians and business leaders, engineers and laborers, preservationists and ordinary citizens, Robert W. Righter tells the epic story of the first major environmental battle of the twentieth century, which reverberates to this day.
Author: Robert W. Righter Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199882061 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
In the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco desperately needed reliable supplies of water and electricity. Its mayor, James Phelan, pressed for the damming of the Tuolumne River in the newly created Yosemite National Park, setting off a firestorm of protest. For the first time in American history, a significant national opposition arose to defend and preserve nature, led by John Muir and the Sierra Club, who sought to protect what they believed was the right of all Americans to experience natural beauty, particularly the magnificent mountains of the Yosemite region. Yet the defenders of the valley, while opposing the creation of a dam and reservoir, did not intend for it to be maintained as wilderness. Instead they advocated a different kind of development--the building of roads, hotels, and an infrastructure to support recreational tourism. Using articles, pamphlets, and broadsides, they successfully whipped up public opinion against the dam. Letters from individuals began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and major newspapers published editorials condemning the dam. The fight went to the floor of Congress, where politicians debated the value of scenery and the costs of western development. Ultimately, passage of the passage of the Raker Act in 1913 by Congress granted San Francisco the right to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A decade later the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal, was completed. Yet conflict continued over the ownership of the watershed and the profits derived from hydroelectrocity. To this day the reservoir provides San Francisco with a pure and reliable source of drinking water and an important source of power. Although the Sierra Club lost this battle, the controversy stirred the public into action on behalf of national parks. Future debates over dams and restoration clearly demonstrated the burgeoning strength of grassroots environmentalism. In a narrative peopled by politicians and business leaders, engineers and laborers, preservationists and ordinary citizens, Robert W. Righter tells the epic story of the first major environmental battle of the twentieth century, which reverberates to this day.
Author: Robert W. Righter Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780198034100 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
In the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco desperately needed reliable supplies of water and electricity. Its mayor, James Phelan, pressed for the damming of the Tuolumne River in the newly created Yosemite National Park, setting off a firestorm of protest. For the first time in American history, a significant national opposition arose to defend and preserve nature, led by John Muir and the Sierra Club, who sought to protect what they believed was the right of all Americans to experience natural beauty, particularly the magnificent mountains of the Yosemite region. Yet the defenders of the valley, while opposing the creation of a dam and reservoir, did not intend for it to be maintained as wilderness. Instead they advocated a different kind of development--the building of roads, hotels, and an infrastructure to support recreational tourism. Using articles, pamphlets, and broadsides, they successfully whipped up public opinion against the dam. Letters from individuals began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and major newspapers published editorials condemning the dam. The fight went to the floor of Congress, where politicians debated the value of scenery and the costs of western development. Ultimately, passage of the passage of the Raker Act in 1913 by Congress granted San Francisco the right to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A decade later the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal, was completed. Yet conflict continued over the ownership of the watershed and the profits derived from hydroelectrocity. To this day the reservoir provides San Francisco with a pure and reliable source of drinking water and an important source of power. Although the Sierra Club lost this battle, the controversy stirred the public into action on behalf of national parks. Future debates over dams and restoration clearly demonstrated the burgeoning strength of grassroots environmentalism. In a narrative peopled by politicians and business leaders, engineers and laborers, preservationists and ordinary citizens, Robert W. Righter tells the epic story of the first major environmental battle of the twentieth century, which reverberates to this day.
Author: John Warfield Simpson Publisher: Random House of Canada ISBN: 9780375422317 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 356
Book Description
A lively study of America's first environmental battle describes how, in 1913, Congress authorized the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Dam and Reservoir within the bondaries of Yosemite National Park, chronicling the intrigues that surrounded the project, profiling participants in the debate, and the implications of Hetch Hetchy for American attitudes toward environmental stewardship. 10,000 first printing.
Author: Char Miller Publisher: Broadview Press ISBN: 1460406885 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation approving the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam to inundate the Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite National Park. This decision concluded a decade-long, highly contentious debate over the dam-and-reservoir complex to supply water to post-earthquake San Francisco, a battle that was dramatic, unsettling, and consequential. Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents captures the tensions animating the long-running controversy and places them in their historical context. Key to understanding the debate is the prior and violent dispossession of Indigenous Nations from the valley they had stewarded for thousands of years. Their removal by the mid-nineteenth century enabled white elite tourism to take over, setting the stage for the subsequent debate for and against the dam in the early twentieth century. That debate contained a Faustian bargain: to secure an essential water supply for San Francisco meant the destruction of the valley that John Muir and others praised so highly. This contentious situation continues to reverberate, as interest groups now battle over whether to tear down the dam and restore the valley. Hetch Hetchy remains a dramatic flashpoint in American environmental culture.
Author: Kenneth Brower Publisher: Heyday Books ISBN: 9781597142281 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 118
Book Description
In the 1920's the thirsty city of San Francisco reached deep into Yosemite National Park to build the O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River, diverting one-third of the river's water and flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said at the time to be as magnificent as Yosemite Valley itself. Brower envisages the species-by-species reclamation of the valley by its native flora and fauna as wildness flourishes again. Offering viable alternatives for restoration, Brower's Hetch Hetchy is both an exploration of the pitched battle over an environmental tragedy and an inspiring reverie of a possible future.
Author: John Muir Publisher: Binker North ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
In the classic nature work, The Yosemite, the great American naturalist, John Muir, describes the Yosemite valley's geography and the myriad types of trees, flowers, birds, and other animals that can be found there. The Yosemite is among the finest examples of John Muir nature writings.The Yosemite is a classic nature/outdoor adventure text and a fine example of John Muir nature writings. In this volume, Muir describes the Yosemite valley's geography and the various types of trees, flowers and animals that can be found there. John Muir (April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile (340 km) John Muir Trail, a hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor.[2] Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, Camp Muir and Muir Glacier. In Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130 mile long distance route, was named in honor of him. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas. He is today referred to as the "Father of the National Parks" and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life. Muir has been considered 'an inspiration to both Scots and Americans'. Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he is often quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world," writes Holmes. Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", [ while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "...saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism." 403 On April 21, 2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist. Muir was born in the small house at left. His father bought the adjacent building in 1842, and made it the family home.
Author: John McPhee Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374708630 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.
Author: Harriet Ritvo Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226720845 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Located in the heart of England’s Lake District, the placid waters of Thirlmere seem to be the embodiment of pastoral beauty. But under their calm surface lurks the legacy of a nineteenth-century conflict that pitted industrial progress against natural conservation—and helped launch the environmental movement as we know it. Purchased by the city of Manchester in the 1870s, Thirlmere was dammed and converted into a reservoir, its water piped one hundred miles south to the burgeoning industrial city and its workforce. This feat of civil engineering—and of natural resource diversion—inspired one of the first environmental struggles of modern times. The Dawn of Green re-creates the battle for Thirlmere and the clashes between conservationists who wished to preserve the lake and developers eager to supply the needs of a growing urban population. Bringing to vivid life the colorful and strong-minded characters who populated both sides of the debate, noted historian Harriet Ritvo revisits notions of the natural promulgated by romantic poets, recreationists, resource managers, and industrial developers to establish Thirlmere as the template for subsequent—and continuing—environmental struggles.
Author: Robert W. Righter
Author: Robert W. Righter
Author: Robert W. Righter
Author: Robert W. Righter
Author: John Warfield Simpson
Author: Char Miller
Author: Kenneth Brower
Author: John Muir
Author: Holway R. Jones
Author: John McPhee
Author: Harriet Ritvo