Transcription:
To Theodore Roosevelt Martinez, California April 21, 1908 Dear Mr. President: I am anxious that the Yosemite National
Park may be saved from all sorts of commercialism marks of man's work other than the roads, hotels, etc., required to make
its wonders blessings available. For as far as I have seen there is not in all the wonderful Sierra, or indeed in the world,
another so grand wonderful useful a block of Nature's mountain handiwork. There is now under consideration, as doubtless
you well know, an application of San Francisco Supervisors for the use of Hetch Hetchy Valley Lake Eleanor as storage reservoirs
for a City water supply. This application should I think be denied, especially the Hetch Hetchy part, for this Valley, as
you will see by the inclosed discription, is a counterpart of Yosemite, one of the most sublime beautiful important features
of the Park, to dam submerge it would be hardly less destructive deplorable in its effects on the Park in general than would
be the damming of Yosemite itself. For its falls groves delightful camp-grounds are surpassed or equalled only in Yosemite,
furthermore it is the hall of entrance to the grand Tuolumne Canon diacritic which opens a wonderful way to the magnificent
Tuolumne Meadows, the focus of 04151