A Win–Lose Situation: Historical Context, Ethos, and Rhetorical Choices in John Muir's 1908 “Hetch Hetchy Valley” Article

In January 1908, The Sierra Club Bulletin publishes an article by its president, John Muir, entitled, "The Hetch Hetchy Valley." This valley lies in the northeast corner of the newly established Yosemite National Park and is almost identical to the main Yosemite Valley. San Francisco city planners have argued that the valley should be dammed to create a reservoir that will supply their city with clean water. Muir passionately retorts in his article that the Hetch Hetchy Valley must not be dammed; it must be preserved, simply because it possesses intrinsic value as a source of recreation and spiritual renewal. The rhetorical choices in this article are greatly influenced by the historical events leading up to the dam proposal. The fight over the dam project becomes a representation of the preservationist, conservationist, and industrialist sentiments of the day. The power John Muir exercises in influencing the federal government's choice to approve or reject the proposal rests in his ability to influence national opinion regarding the project. This ability to influence is determined in part by his ethos as perceived by his three audiences: preservationist, conservationist, and industrialist. Muir chooses to target his sympathetic preservationist audience and in doing so makes textual choices that vilify his opponents while attempting to foment the passions of his supporters. The fight becomes a bitter one by the time the darn project finally receives approval in 1913. However, in 1908, when the article is written, the battle is just starting to heat up. Historical Context John Muir was, and is, a widely read field naturalist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, he moves with his family to a farm in Wisconsin when he is eleven. Muir studies natural science at the University of Wisconsin for two years in the early 1860s but does not complete a degree. He is interested in both technology and nature, but an industrial accident in Indianapolis nearly costs him his eyesight in 1867 and leads to a pivotal decision. Convalescing from blindness with a brochure of Yosemite Valley in his lap, Muir writes to his lifelong friend, Mrs. Jeanne Carr, "As soon as I got out into Heaven's light ... I bade adieu to all my mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God" (qtd. in Bade 155, Vol. 1). Muir's renewed devotion to nature studies begins with a 1,000mile walk from Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico "... by the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find ..." (Thousand-Mile Walk 1). The following year Muir sails to San Francisco and eventually settles in Yosemite Valley, where he is based for the next five years. He spends much of his time ranging the mountains and high meadows recording botanical and geological observations, as well as his well-known wilderness epiphanies (Cohen 28-88). In 1874, Muir publishes a series of articles entitled "Studies in the Sierra" that launches a successful writing career (Wolfe 88). Also during this period, he is able to play host and Yosemite guide to such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Asa Gray, and Joseph LeConte (Muir, Wilderness 163, 251; Fox 20). By the 1880s, Muir is publishing articles about forest destruction in the Sierra Nevada through the influential Century magazine. Due largely to the work of Muir and the Century's associate editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, Congress votes to create Yosemite National Park in 1890 (Vickery 76). In 1892, Muir, two Berkeley professors, and a San Francisco attorney start the Sierra Club, modeled after the Appalachian Mountain Club. Muir is nominated president, a role he enthusiastically fulfills until his death in 1914 (Fox 107). In the spring of 1903, on a political tour through the West, President Theodore Roosevelt requests that Muir show him Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt spend four days camping under the stars, vigorously touring the valley on horseback, and striking up a lasting friendship (Roosevelt 321). …