New West Magazine highlighted “Saving Yosemite” 45 years ago with a thoughtful and provocative article by journalist Tom DeVries that included restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley. It is an outstanding article and well worth reading.
DeVries suggestions for saving Yosemite include diminishing automobile traffic, splitting up the concessions, expanding the park to include Mono Lake, involving local tribes and draining (restoring) Hetch Hetchy.
It’s both frustrating and refreshing to see concerns expressed 45 years ago that are still with us today.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we have refrained from talking about “draining” the reservoir – opting instead for “relocating” it to emphasize our commitment to maintaining a reliable water system for San Francisco. “Draining” is correct, however, and the reservoir’s storage function could well be replaced by groundwater banking or recycling – technologies not available when DeVries wrote the article.
DeVries rues the sour deal cut in 1913 when President Wilson signed the Raker Act (ignoring the water system alternatives available at the time) and waxes fondly at the thought of a small plaque in a restored valley that commemorates “the day we regained our senses and pulled the plug”.
Tom’s other suggestions are noteworthy as well. Perhaps if the concessions for lodging and food competed with one another, rather than be operated by a single corporation, services would be better, even cheaper, and we would not be reading about rats at the Ahwahnee Hotel.
In recent years, Yosemite has indeed taken steps to welcome tribal input in park planning and operations as DeVries suggests. We’d like to see more.
Expanding the park to include Mono Lake is an idea we hadn’t heard. The State of California might prefer to keep the lake rather than hand it over to the feds, but Mono Lake is only a few short miles from Yosemite.
Yosemite continues to struggle with car traffic, which has includes Hetch Hetchy on weekends in the spring. If there were better public transit options, Yosemite’s reservations system would either be less of a hindrance to visitors or wholly unnecessary. (The Hetch Hetchy entrance is the only one af the parks gates where there is not public transit available.)
New West magazine was founded in 1976, renamed California in 1981, and ceased publication in 1991.
Tom DeVries has long since departed the Bay Area for Mariposa, one of Yosemite’s gateway communities. We thank him for sharing his plan for a better Yosemite in 1980 and for pulling it out of the archives for us to share.