History
The name "Hetch Hetchy" comes from the Native American Sierra Miwok language and refers to a grass with edible seeds that grows in the valley. It was first used by Joseph Screech, who in 1850 became the first non-Native American to enter the valley. Screech noted that Paiutes had formerly inhabited Hetch Hetchy and still gathered seeds, roots and acorns in and around the valley. Acorns are available in the valley, but are rare elsewhere in the high country.
In 1867 Charles F. Hoffmann of the California Geological Survey conducted the first survey of the valley.
Read more about this topic: Hetch Hetchy Valley
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)