The Hidden Story of the Unnamed Lake

     Yosemite is a place of many mountains, canyons and lakes.  There are so many that some of the best even go unnamed. It is also home to a diverse variety of flora and fauna. Transport any of these named and unnamed wonders in the backyard of any metropolitian area of the world and you'd have created an eighth wonder of the world -- at least until it became overrun with urbia.  However, if you lived in an a particular city called San Francisco, and this place called Yosemite was about 200 miles away, you'd find it OK to take one of these wonders of nature and :

Extinct Big Horn (found near Tilden Lake)     This place is called Hetch Hetchy, the drainage of Northern Yosemite.  It was once the home of big horned mountain sheep.  (The horn in the picture was found in the Tilden Lake area of NW Yosemite) No more are the high mountain routes traveled by these spectacular animals.  Instead, Hetch Hetchy has joined the list of many other outdated, failed and/or failing government do-gooder programs.

     Make no mistake, the Hetch Hetchy dam's original original intent was all fine and good.  There were few alternative energy resources at that time.  There was no interstate energy grid to share and provide energy amongst the people of this nation.  Environmentalisms were unknown sciences.  There was a need for water and there was lots of water to be had.  Time has passed.  Power is available from numerous sources.  There are many ways to get the same water without damming this precious natural area in a national park.  

     What to do?  Take up the challenge and assess the situation in light of new technology and resources.  Then get busy and fix the problem :  

     Do what is right for all, not just the special interests of the residents of San Francisco and the Bay Area.  For more on this issue, take a look at the Congressional Debates of Hetch Hetchy way back when...

Always Right

     BTW, I grew up and lived in San Francisco Bay Area for about 30 years.  My first visit to Yosemite was in the early 1950s.