Chapter Seven:
Two Battles for Kings Canyon (1931-1947)
In the vast Sierra wilderness, far to the
southward of the famous Yosemite Valley, there is yet a grander valley
of the same kind. It is situated on the south fork of the Kings River,
above the most extensive groves and forests of the giant sequoia, and
beneath the shadows of the highest mountains in the range, where canyons
are the deepest and the snow-laden peaks are crowded most closely
together. [1]
SO WROTE JOHN MUIR in 1891 about an area he had come
to love and admire in nearly two decades of exploration. Muir was not
the earliest to explore the region or to pen its praises, but it was
Muir, poet and scientist of the Sierra Nevada, and after him his beloved
Sierra Club, who would inextricably link their goals and philosophy with
the future parkland. [2]
Thus began one of the longest and ultimately most
cantankerous struggles to create a national park. Recent historians of
the park movement in America have suggested that national parks were
created from lands deemed "worthless" for traditional resources like
minerals, timber, agriculture and water. [3]
The problem of Kings Canyon, and its ultimate solution however, were
quite the opposite. Contestants so perceived the presence of such
valuable resources, especially irrigation and hydroelectric potential,
that they fought one another to a developmental standstill for more than
sixty years. In so doing, they allowed recreation and preservation
factions to gain power, divide their enemies, and negotiate a compromise
which allowed the eventual formation of one of the nation's earliest
"wilderness" parks.
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