Hetch
Hetchy Valley, 40" H x 48" W
Heat transfers of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir drainage maps, stitching, and
photographs of the history of the dam, on satin, silk, sheers and velvet.
The borders are embroidered with descriptions of Hetch Hetchy Valley by
John Muir and Robert Price from the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
and facts about the O'Shaughnessy Dam.
Hetch Hetchy Valley is a U-shaped glacial valley similar to and just north
of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park. Many of the familiar vertical
walls, waterfalls, flora and fauna seen in Yosemite Valley, are present
in old photographs of Hetch Hetchy Valley taken before it was flooded
by San Francisco in the first part of the 20th century. The fight against
building a dam in Yosemite National Park was a major environmental battle
in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The
borders are embroidered with the following text.
Top border: The canyon begins near the lower end of Tuolumne
Meadows and extends to the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a distance of about 18
miles, though it will seem much longer to anyone who scrambles through
it. John Muir, 1890, Century Magazine
Left border: O'Shaughnessy Dam is a 312 foot high , gravity arch concrete dam... responsible for Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, located on the main stem of the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley. The reservoir, with its capacity of 360,360 acre-feet, is supplied primarily by snow melt from a watershed of 459 square miles located entirely within Yosemite National Park. (Bureau of Rec 1988)
Right border: From Rancheria Mountain, in one morning, we dropped down six thousand feet to Hetch Hetchy Valley, where we spent two days... with its rocks, walls, cascades, and flowers. As we left the valley early in the morning, each breathed a silent prayer that this temple with its stupendous walls and magnificent falls, picturesque oaks, limpid stream, Kolana Rock, should not be transformed into an unsightly storage reservoir. With the Sierra Club in 1911, Robert W Price
Bottom border: In the first week of last November, I set out from here on an excursion of Hetch Hetchy Valley. I set out straight across the mountains leaving Yosemite by Indian Canon. I carried one pair of woolen blankets and three loaves of bread - I reckoned that two loaves would be sufficient for the trip, provided all went sunnily, the third was a big round extra that I called my storm loaf. John Muir, 1872
I visited Hetch Hetchy Reservoir with my 3 small children in August, 1997 during a 3 week artist residency at Yosemite N.P. It took a few hours to get there by car. The road exits and reenters the park, and bumps along on unpaved roads. It seemed like it was twice as hot at the reservoir, as it had been in Yosemite Valley. We parked and walked to the far side of the dam and through a cool tunnel and along a service road towards the falls. We sat down on the road to eat a snack and draw - each of the kids with their own sketch book and drawing materials. A ranger approached on horseback and asked if we needed anything. My 7 year old son looked up and said, "we are artists."