San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal take viewers through the legendary past of engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy's Hetch Hetchy Water System with historic images of early San Francisco - from the Gold Rush days and the 1906 earthquake and fire through the construction of the most advanced water system of its time.
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The new 2005 edition of San Francisco Water and Power, A History of the Municipal Water Department and Hetch Hetchy System, released today, celebrates the extraordinary events and memorable leaders who conceived, designed and built San Francisco’s water system with foresight to provide today’s Bay Area with high quality drinking water supplies. The city’s need for reliable water supplies after the devastation of the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 brought the brightest engineers of their day to meet the challenges of hydraulic engineering across more than 160 miles of wilderness, developing new technologies and construction techniques, mastering impassable terrain and intractable financial woes to complete the incredible water works that fosters the high quality of life and economic strength that our 21st century San Francisco Bay Area enjoys.
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Before building the essential elements of the system, it was first necessary to get into the mountains with packers and guides, often using chartered stagecoaches and freight wagons out of Groveland, a small mountain town left over from the Gold Rush. It sits astride the Big Oak Flat road into Yosemite. Read more
