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Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation approving the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam to inundate the Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite National Park. This decision concluded a decade-long, highly contentious debate over the dam-and-reservoir complex to supply water to post-earthquake San Francisco, a battle that was dramatic, unsettling, and consequential. Hetch Hetchy: A History…

This Land is Their Land

Char Miller[1] However polite its title, the 1891 “Petition to the Senators and Representatives of the Congress of the United States in the Behalf of the Remnants of the former Tribes of the Yosemite Indians Praying for Aid and Assistance” was anything but deferential. It offers a blunt critique of white gold miners’ brutal incursion into…

A Toast to a New Stamp Act Sourcebook

What better way to celebrate a victory than with a series of toasts. A group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty did just that on the occasion of the repeal of the Stamp Act. This document is included in Jonathan Mercantini’s newly published The Stamp Act of 1765, the second title to appear in the…