The Man Who Dammed Hetch Hetchy: San Francisco's Fight for a Yosemite Water Supply

The damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park is widely seen as a watershed event in American environmental history. Passionately opposed by naturalist John Muir and his ardent supporters, the massive undertaking succeeded largely through the efforts of John R. Freeman, one of the most important, influential, and politically adroit engineers of the Progressive Era. In The Man Who Dammed Hetch Hetchy, Donald C. Jackson focuses on Freeman to offer a nuanced account of how the C...