In the summer of 1913, a battle waged in Congress over the legislation that would become the Raker Act, designed to open the way for the damming of the Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite National Park. That July, John Muir visited Inverness, where he came to deliver a message. It was a message about the fight for Hetch Hetchy, and it needed to be delivered in person.
Inverness in 1913 was filled with Muir’s friends and admirers, so it was a good place to plot strategy and raise money. He could have had his pick of hosts. The most obvious choice was William and Rachel Colby, who were just completing the construction of their cabin at 85 Kenneth Way. The Colbys were among Muir’s closest friends and William was a chief architect of the Sierra Club’s strategies to save the valley. Muir was also acquainted with Emma Shafter Howard, a wealthy patron of environmental causes and one of seven women who were Sierra Club charter members. She had corresponded with Muir in 1910 about conservation efforts in Marin County. She spent summers in her wood-clad cottage at 14 Bruce Street.
Instead, Muir accepted an invitation from Evelyn Crow Simmons, a Sacramentan with whom he had only a slim acquaintance. The Simmons family had built a shingled house in 1906 at 55 Elgin Way. In the summer of 1913, Evelyn wrote to Muir at his home in Martinez that she was “delighted that you are coming to Inverness.” She then provided directions: “Take the Sausalito ferry from San Francisco at 5.15 P.M. and at Sausalito the train for Point Reyes. From there we have a pretty four-mile drive to Inverness. The stage meets the train at Point Reyes. Mrs. Marshall joins me in a warm welcome for you.”
The reference to Mrs. Marshall is a clue to Muir’s real business in Inverness. She was Evelyn’s sister, Myra Crow Marshall, and her spouse was Robert B. Marshall, another charter member of the Sierra Club and a longtime friend and confidante of Muir. In 1913, Robert was well-positioned to help—or hinder—the legislative battle for Hetch Hetchy. He was the chief geographer of the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, D.C. As a testament to his influence, in 1915 he would become the first superintendent to the precursor of the national parks system.
Myra and her two daughters were visiting Evelyn while Robert remained behind in Washington. Myra had let Muir know about her summer plans in May before leaving D.C. for California.
Muir did not stay in Inverness long, and he no doubt made the excuse to his host that the Hetch Hetchy controversy required him to return to Martinez. “We hope for the success of your Hetch Hetchy work but can’t quite forgive its taking you away from us so soon,” Evelyn wrote to him after his visit. Recalling the visit in 1980, Elizabeth Simmons, Evelyn’s niece, remembered that Muir “was thrilled with the Bishop Pines near Miss Burris’” Highland Lodge and that he rose early when it was still dark to be ready for Ben’s Stage to take him to the morning train leaving from Point Reyes Station.
In extending an invitation for him to return to Inverness sooner rather than later, Evelyn recognized the Marshall family as the main attraction. “Mr. Marshall will not be in California this summer and Mrs. Marshall leaves us about the middle of August to visit friends in San Jose,” she wrote. Her letter closed with niceties and a list of the children of the Simmons and Marshall families whom he had met during his stay.
Evelyn’s letter politely concealed an awkward truth: the battle over Hetch Hetchy had not hastened Muir’s early return to Martinez so much as it explained his visit to Inverness in the first place. For the real purpose of his visit was revealed in a different letter that reached him in Martinez about two weeks later.
The letter from Robert B. Marshall dated July 19, 1913, began with cordial superficiality: “Mrs. Marshall has just written of the great joy you gave them all by your visit to Inverness—her only complaint was that you could not stay longer.” But Marshall quickly turned to a matter that must have weighed heavily on his mind—a matter so serious that he understood that Muir had traveled to Inverness personally to convey it to Myra so that it might reach him.
He wrote: “I am positive no one in the world has or ever will feel the same deep bond of sympathetic affection for you that I do. With this absolutely honest statement, you can imagine my feeling of pain when Mrs. Marshall informed me that you even for a moment questioned my loyalty regarding the Hetch Hetchy matter.”
And there it was. Muir had come to Inverness to enjoy neither Inverness’s natural beauty nor the company of Sierra Club friends, but to convey his feeling of betrayal. He believed that Marshall had testified in support of the dam project in Congress—which Marshall denied—or, almost as inexcusably, that he had remained silent at a decisive moment. The summer of 1913 was that moment. The Society for the Preservation of National Parks, which Muir headed, had submitted its written opposition to the dam on June 27, 1913, and the Raker bill would be introduced in early August.
Marshall’s voice at that critical time could make the difference between winning and losing. Marshall knew it too, writing to Muir: “I have taken no action whatever, for to do so would, no doubt, cost me my position, which I can’t afford to give up; I must control my feelings and actions for the sake of my three girls. If I could afford to do so, I would give up my position and fight to retain Hetch Hetchy Valley as a park to an extent that would startle even you. I honestly believe I would win, but as I said above my mouth is gagged under present conditions.”
Marshall felt his role in government precluded any advocacy on the side of Muir’s great cause. But he closed the letter by reaffirming his loyalty to both his friend and his mission: “This letter is personal to you, Mr. Muir, and I ask you, please, to never again suspect my loyalty to the cause, no matter how or from whom you may get your information.”
The battle for Hetch Hetchy was lost a few months later, in December 1913, but that summer marked the beginning of the end. Marshall visited Muir in Martinez shortly after the Raker Act passed. He wrote about how sorrowful Muir seemed in his “cobwebbed study in his lonely house…with the full force of his defeat upon him.” If only Congress and President Woodrow Wilson could have stalled the legislation “until the old man had gone away—and I fear it will be very soon,” he wrote. Muir died a year later, in December 1914.
Courtney Linn is an executive with a Sacramento-based credit union and lives part time in Inverness. He thanks Therese Dunn at the Sierra Club and historian Dewey Livingston for their assistance.