National Parks by Alfred Runte

Author:Alfred Runte [Runte, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58979-473-3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Equally, the campaign to reduce Yosemite National Park, established in 1890, spawned schemes with a decidedly synthetic bent. Chief among them was the socalled restoration of Yosemite waterfalls, sponsored by the park’s leading congressional opponent, Representative Anthony Caminetti of California. “The waterfalls of Yosemite Valley are seen at their best in June, and after that rapidly diminish,” argued a state forester, Allen Kelley, in smokescreening Caminetti’s actual plan. This was to propose that Congress “pay for surveys of reservoir sites in the mountains surrounding Yosemite Valley, with a view to storing water in the streams that supply the numerous falls.” He again underplayed that the water was to be used for irrigation, not just socalled scenic enhancement. His and Kelley’s appeal to national pride nonetheless stood to advance their case on the enduring strength of monumentalism. Just “at the time of year when tourists from abroad find it convenient to visit the valley,” Kelley noted, Yosemite Falls in reality was “no waterfall, only a discolored streak on the dry face of the cliff.” He proposed maintaining the cataract “either by damming the creek or turning a portion of the waters of the Tuolumne River into its bed through a flume about twenty miles long.” A similar embankment “100 yards in length . . . would store plenty of water for Nevada and Vernal Falls,” while Bridal Veil, in autumn “a merely trickling film over the rocks,” would best be augmented “by making a reservoir of the meadows along the creek.” In publishing the argument, Harper’s Weekly lent it special credence, adding before and after woodcuts of the falls and potential dam sites.26

Although Caminetti’s scheme appropriately died, in 1913 Congress sided with his philosophy by approving the nolessobjectionable Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Again taking their cues from Kelley and Caminetti, Hetch Hetchy’s supporters glossed over its damaging features as actual visual improvements. No longer might preservationists ignore the consequences of accepting development in the national parks. Even the most innocentlooking modifications initially could pose serious problems in the future. So with the automobile, the naturalist, Victor H. Cahalane, endorsed the suspicions of its early skeptics. “As more and more visitors flood the parks,” he noted in 1940, “demands for all kinds of ‘improvements’ arise. First and most numerous have been requests for elaborate structures and bigcity amusements.” If secondary, schemes to dress up the national parks were advanced with equal persistence. “What good is a volcano if it erupts only once in a century or so? inquire the ‘efficiency experts.’ Since it is futile to ask a mountain to take off its cap and spout lava, they request that tunnels be excavated into Lassen Peak so that they may see how the uneasy giant looks inside.” Meanwhile, in Yosemite the CaminettiKelley proposal had become an annual petition. Indeed, “each year,” Cahalane scoffed, “the administration is asked to build reservoirs above the valley rim where water could be stored and fed to the falls on the Fourth of July and Labor Day,” with “special showings” for “the Elks, Kiwanis, Lions and Women’s Clubs.

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