Hetch Hetchy Valley and Reservoir; undiscovered but stunning part of Yosemite!

Hetch Hetchy Valley and Reservoir, looking east from trail on the north shore trail of the reservoir.

The trail along the north shore of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, looking back towards the dam.

The Hetch Hetchy Dam, started in 1919, completed in 1923 and further heightened in 1938, it now floods the valley and creates a reservoir that is 8 miles long, and up to 300 feet deep.

Hetch Hetchy Watershed at top, the much-more visited Yosemite Valley (to the south) at bottom of map.

The Hetch Hetchy Valley and free-flowing Tuolumne River, in the early 1900s, before the dam was approved.

A portion of the ferocious Rim Fire of a year ago, that burned vast swathes of forest in and around Yosemite Park; this view looking to the northeast, into the Tuolumne River drainage, with Hetch Hetchy in distance.

The old post office in Chinese Camp, part of a three block Gold Rush ghost town, right on Hwy. 120, on the way to Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite Valleys.

Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and the Tuolumne Valley are close cousins to the mighty Yosemite Valley, virtually undiscovered and almost equally stunning.  Hetch Hetchy is just 115 miles and a scenic day-tour from Stockton!

The Hetch Hetchy Valley was the scene of one of the most epic environmental battles 100 years ago, as John Muir, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups fought to keep this valley pristine and free of development.

Muir's exploration of both Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite, and writings in the influential Century Magazine, helped to get Yosemite National Park established in 1890. However, the much less-visited Hetch Hetchy Valley portion of the park remained in peril.

San Francisco had eyed the valley for extending its water supply since the 1890s and applied several times to the federal government for water rights but was denied. The huge San Francisco earthquake in 1906, when much of the city burned, underlined the city's need for more water and turned the political winds in the city’s favor.

In 1908, US Secretary of interior Garfield granted the city the rights to development of the Tuolumne River, provoking a multi-year environmental battle led by the Sierra Club and John Muir. Muir observed, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well damn for water tanks the peoples’ cathedrals and churches for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man".

In 1913, writing to Robert Johnson of Century Magazine, he pressed his argument, noting "The Hetch Hetchy Valley is a wonderfully exact counterpart of the great Yosemite, not only in its sublime cliffs and waterfalls and it's peaceful river, but in the gardens, groves, meadows and campgrounds on its flowery park-like floor". He would continue to fight the city of San Francisco to his death in 1914.

Muir's writings are archived at the University of Pacific and can be read online at go.pacific.edu/specialcollections.

In 1913, the US Congress passed and President Wilson signed the Raker Act, which permitted the flooding of the valley. Muir died the following year, bitter to have lost the fight. Construction on the O’Shaughnessy Dam would begin in 1919 and end in 1923; it was further heightened in 1938 and now supplies water to almost 2.5 million San Franciscans.

What remains is a still stunning valley and pristine 8-mile long reservoir, nearly the equal of Yosemite Valley, and visitors have this part of the park almost unto themselves and can still appreciate the treasure that so stoked John Muir’s soul.

One can drive to the parking lot right beside the O'Shaughnessy Dam. Views from the dam are memorable, but hike a half-mile or several miles along the north side of the reservoir for the most indelible views.  Hetch Hetchy’s relatively low elevation makes for one of the central Sierra’s longest hiking seasons, but, check weather forecasts for winter trips.

Looking up the valley, on the right one sees the massive Kolana Rock, on the left, the Hetch Hetchy Dome. The view extends east, up the reservoir and through the Tuolumne Valley; serious hikers can continue even further east into the Tuolumne Meadows area. Hikers will find varied views both remarkable, and reminiscent of nearby Yosemite Valley.

Crossing the dam, our trail took us past the base of Tueeulala Falls, dry for lack of snowmelt, and to the base of Wapama Falls, surging mightily with early snow melt. It's about a 2 mile hike from the dam to Wapama Falls on an easy, well-maintained trail (note to self: return in April or May to admire these falls when more water is flowing!).

The discussion over water supplied to San Francisco, and ongoing battle over restoration of the valley by removing the dam, continues – but entering our fourth year of California drought, probably won't gain traction in the near-term. Until then, pack your binoculars and camera and set forth on a serious day tour, or longer!  If you are planning a longer trip to Yosemite in general, include a day to tour Hetch Hetchy!

One of the side benefits of such a trip is you pass through a couple of historic towns worth a stop. Chinese Camp is a true Gold Rush ghost town, right on Highway 120. Take the walk down the three block stretch of Main Street, with an old abandoned hotel, post office, merchant’s buildings, rooming house and homes slowly moldering away. Just up the hill on Main is the St. Francis Xavier Mission Church/cemetery, established in 1854.  You will find family plots and pioneer tombstones dating to the 1860s.

Groveland is closer to Hetch Hetchy, also on Hwy. 120, a quaint Gold Rush town catering to tourists with the historic Groveland Hotel, jail dating to 1854 and Groveland Pizza, on north edge of town, a fine family food stop.

Camp Mather and Mather Family Camp, just nine miles from Hetch Hetchy, offers a store, restaurant and variety of accommodations, from cabins to lodge, in a bucolic wooded setting. Vast stands of scorched forest along Evergreen Road, both before and after Camp Mather, offer mute testimony to the ferocious Rim Fire of a year ago.

How to get there: From Stockton, 115 miles, 2.75 hours. Take Highway 4 east to Copperopolis, turn right on O'Byrnes Ferry Road, take a left on highway 120/108 and follow Highway 120 past Chinese camp and Groveland. Then, left on Evergreen Road to the reservoir.  Leave early, particularly if you want time to see Chinese Camp and Groveland; and this portion of Yosemite closes at 5 PM.

What to take: Pack cold weather gear, binoculars, camera and snacks for the trip. Fishing rods and your CA fishing license!
For more information: Yosemite National Park, go to www.nps.gov/yose; call 209/372-0200 (then dial 3, then 5) or by mail: Public Information Office, PO Box 577, Yosemite, CA 95389 (the park does charge a day-use fee).
For additional travel destination inspiration, see my blog: http://blogs.eSanJoaquin.com/Valley travel; to contact me, tviall@msn.com.
Happy travels in the West!

On the trail of John Muir; the road runs through Stockton and UOP!



From top, down: John Burroughs on left, and John Muir, Yosemite, 1909; John Muir “Squirrelville letter” from the UOP archives, written in Sequoia ink, made from bark from the majestic trees (John Muir papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacifid Library, copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust); Muir’s writing desk and cluttered study is left as the writer would have left it during a long writing stint; A small portion of the Muir peach orchards, with a period-correct horse-drawn sprayer; Drawing of Yosemite Valley in one of Muir’s field notebooks (John Muir papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacifid Library, copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust); Muir home in Martinez, open to the public at no charge; and University of Pacific head of Special Collections Michael Wurtz with one of two Muir bookcases at UOP.

John Muir, the world's first conservationist, father of the National Park Service and cofounder of the Sierra Club, spent his adult years in nearby Martinez, California and more than occasionally traveled through Stockton. The largest collection of his papers, research and writings are archived in University of Pacific's climate controlled archive, open to Stocktonians.  His travels through  Stockton make him almost a native son!

Join us on the trail of John Muir – with nearby exciting opportunities to learn and explore!
Muir was born in 1838 in Scotland and immigrated in 1849 with his family to a farm in Wisconsin.

After reaching adulthood, starting university and then a factory job in a carriage works, an eye injury almost cost Muir use of his eye and led to his decision to begin a life of wanderlust.

In 1868, he traveled to California and quickly  visited the sights in Yosemite. He then spent three years living in Yosemite, much of it as a shepherd, built a small cabin and recorded his adventures in notebooks and journals. Muir always professed a difficulty in writing up his travels, but would become his era’s best known conservationist and champion of preserving our wild lands.

In Yosemite, he met and toured with Ralph Waldo Emerson; inspired by that author, Thoreau and others he began writing for Overland Monthly magazine in 1872, the same year Yellowstone National Park was established.

For The next 10 years, he traveled throughout the west, including many visits to Yosemite and the Sierra and several trips to Alaska before settling in Martinez.  There he would tend the fruit ranch owned by his father-in-law. His ongoing work to preserve and expand Yosemite, incorporate Sequoia as a park and interaction with President Theodore Roosevelt would lead to the establishment of the National Park Service.

During the late 1880s/early 1890s, he would campaign for Yosemite National Park, explore Muir Glacier in Alaska, and help found the Sierra Club and was elected its first president.

From 1882 to 1890, he lived in a nice home in Martinez; upon the death of his father in law, he and his spouse moved into their grand Italianate Victorian home on 2600 acres on the edge of Martinez.
In 1893, his first book was published, The Mountains of California.  In his lifetime, he would publish six volumes; four additional books were published after his death in 1914.

Muir also apparently traveled frequently through Stockton, one of the main jumping-off points to the middle and southern Sierra. He befriended at least one Stockton family, that of Edward Hughes, a Stockton teacher.

Hughes and Muir camped in similar Yosemite campsites, and Hughes worked to befriend Muir by taking the train to Muir's Martinez home.  Muir, in turn, would visit Hughes home in Stockton (since demolished) and letters between the two attest to their friendship and his visits to Stockton.

Muir's grand home is open year-round in Martinez, only an hour from Stockton, and is a wonder of his life and work. His study is preserved just as he left it, with this writing desk and many of his papers, and 300 of the estate's acres (once with over 50 varieties of peach trees) remain surrounding the home.

The home is testimony to his writings and life work; his writing study literally resonates with his indomitable outlook on wild America: “God never made an ugly landscape.  All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild…”, he wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1869. 

Later he would continue his strong advocacy for protecting America’s great places, noting in 1895: “Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard and the tress in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of town”.

It's in the University of Pacific's archives – open to the public – where Muir's work really comes alive. I arranged a tour with UOP head of Special Collections Michael Wurtz, who arranged to show me many of his original writings and sketches.

I delighted in seeing several of his letters, written in Sequoia-ink, and his research books showing his sketches of Yosemite Valley, just as it looks today in photographs. The University contains the vast majority of Muir's writing and research notes, his original writing desk, and two bookcases full of his books.

Read several of Muir's works; a favorite, available in paperback or at the library, is ‘The Wild Muir’, which profiles many of his hair-raising adventures.  Typical of his matter-of-fact writing is this example; in 1875 he and a climbing partner were caught near the top of Mt. Shasta at 14,000 feet, he scribed:

“…down the ridge and past the hissing fumaroles, the storm became inconceivably violent.  The thermometer fell 22 degrees in a few minutes and soon dropped below zero.  The hail gave place to snow, and darkness came on like night.  The wind, rising to the the highest ;pitch of violence, boomed and surged amid the desolate crags,,,”. 

Muir and partner hunkered down amidst the fumaroles, alternately freezing and getting scorched, but survived the ordeal with only moderate frostbite!

Take the 60 mile journey to the beautiful Muir home in Martinez, and spend several hours touring his home and wandering through some of the peach orchards that remain. Just a mile away is historic downtown Martinez, itself a worthy side trip with stately Victorian homes and classic downtown.

Then arrange a tour of UOP's archives – or go online, - where you can see most of his recorded works so arduously scribed by the old conservationist more than 100 years ago and deposited with the university by his descendants, some of them UOP alumni.

The collection includes over 7,000 items of correspondence from 1858 to 1914, including from such luminaries as Emerson, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and others.  Also included are 300 sketches by Muir and about 3,000 photos taken of landscapes or portraits of the author.

For more info: For U0P's archives, contact Michael Wurtz, 209-945-3105, mwurtz@Pacific.edu.  Many of Muir's writings and sketches are also available, online: go.Pacific.edu/special collections – and the University is seeking volunteers to help transcribe many writings not yet transcribed. For more info on the John Muir National Historic Site, 4202 Alhambra Ave., Martinez, CA 94553 go to www.nps.gov/jomu; or call 925–228–8860.  Muir's home is open daily, no charge, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays.

For additional travel destination inspiration, see my blog: http://LittlePlacesIKnow.blogspot.com; to contact me, tviall@msn.com. 

Happy travels in the West!