Triumph or Insult? The Complicated Legacy of the Bay Area's Water Temples

View the full episode transcript

In Redwood City, there’s a round, open-air rotunda that looks like it was plucked right out of ancient Rome. It has stone columns, an ornate dome and even a reflecting pool. It’s called the Pulgas Water Temple, and there’s another one just like it in Sunol, about 40 miles away.

Bay Curious listener Will Hoffknecht enjoys photographing unique places around the Bay Area. These classically styled temples make for some great shots, so he’s visited a few times.

“I’m just trying to better understand the history of those,” Hoffknecht said. “It seems like an odd thing that there’s these multiple temples around.”

The story of these temples begins back in the 1770s.

When the Spaniards chose the location for what’s now San Francisco, it was for strategic reasons. It was the perfect point from which to control the entrance to the bay.

“But for every other reason, it was a terrible place to establish a mission,” said Mitch Postel, the president of the San Mateo County Historical Society. “The worst problem — and they realized this from the beginning — was water.”

There wasn’t much of it, especially once the Gold Rush started and the population of San Francisco ballooned. Drinking water had to be barged in from Marin County. Barrels of it were sold in the streets for as much as one gold dollar per bucket. That was more than most residents’ entire day’s pay.

As the population grew, San Francisco became increasingly dependent on a private company called Spring Valley Water, which had bought up the freshwater sources to the south of the city.

Recognizing their precarious position, city leaders started searching for freshwater elsewhere, even asking the federal government for permission to dam the Tuolumne River at the start of the 20th century. But the Secretary of the Interior wouldn’t allow it because the dam would be inside Yosemite National Park.

But public opinion shifted after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 caused fires that destroyed much of the city, partly because there wasn’t enough water to put them out. Congress responded to the pressure, and despite passionate objections from environmentalists, San Francisco built the O’Shaughnessy Dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. It’s the only time Congress has allowed a dam in an already-established national park.

The city then bought Spring Valley Water and all its infrastructure. This included not just reservoirs but also a giant water temple (PDF) in Sunol. It’s a replica of the ancient Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, near where several aqueducts came together on their way to Rome. One of the Spring Valley owners was a fan of the classics, and he had it built in 1910 to mark where three water sources converged on their way to San Francisco.

When the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct was completed in 1934, San Francisco built a second temple at the end of it — the Pulgas Water Temple. Some 20,000 people came out to watch mountain water flow through the circular Roman temple onto the peninsula for the first time.

Today, when you turn on your tap in San Francisco — and much of the South or East Bay — 85% of the water that comes out is from the Hetch Hetchy water system.

“This is the lifeblood of 2.7 million people,” said Steven Ritchie, assistant general manager at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The water temples celebrate this engineering feat.

But Aanthony Lerma, stewardship coordinator for the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, has a different perspective: “That’s blood water that a lot of those people in the Bay are drinking,” he said.

If you follow the water system upstream into the Sierra Nevada, you come to its beginning — the Hetch Hetchy Valley. It was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in California. Now it’s underwater, flooded by the O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Miners that flooded into California looking for gold made their way into the Sierra Nevada, displacing or killing the Native Americans living there. The remote and enclosed Yosemite Valley became a stronghold for native Californians until a state-sponsored militia burned their villages to make way for what would become the national park and, eventually, the dam.

Lerma was surprised to learn about the giant water temples on the other side of the state celebrating this history. “It seems very removed from what the real story and relationship is with the water system,” he said.

He suggested adding a monument that’s more representative of indigenous Californians.

“I think these are times and opportunities to heal,” he said.

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Olivia Allen-Price: Eight years ago, I’m out on my bicycle on Canada Road in San Mateo. [Music in] It’s a hot summer day, and I’m totally out of water, feeling thirsty, and starting to panic.

That’s when I see a sign for “Pulgas Water Temple” next to an open gate.

“Water temple?” I think. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Is it religious? Some kind of public space? But most importantly – is there a water fountain there?

Once inside the gate I do find some water, but also something utterly strange and surprising: A stately rotunda that looks like it was plucked right out of ancient Rome. Tall stone columns. Ornate carvings. Even an aquamarine reflecting pool.

“What is this place?” I wonder.

Turns out Pulgas Water Temple is something of a roadside attraction off nearby Interstate 280.

Will Hoffknecht: It was just one of the things you’d see from the highway and I would go take pictures of it.

Olivia Allen-Price: Bay Curious listener Will Hoffknecht of Patterson, California enjoys photography and has been drawn to take pictures of this architectural oddity over the years. He was curious enough about it initially, but then he found another one.

Will Hoffknecht: Then there’s Sunol … which is the one in Sunol off the 680.

Olivia Allen-Price: Will wrote to Bay Curious asking about our region’s two Water Temples … and his question won a public voting round at BayCurious.org.

Will Hoffknecht: I’m just trying to better understand the history of those … It seems like an odd thing that there’s these multiple temples around … (laughter) and just why that was a choice in the first place?

Olivia Allen-Price: What exactly are these water temples? Who built them? And … why? Today on the show we’ll explore their grand, celebratory origins, but also how they represent something much darker. Loss, death and destruction in other parts of our state.

We’ll get into it all right after this. I’m Olivia Allen-Price.

Olivia Allen-Price: To understand these water temples — why they’re here and what they’re for — KQED’s Katherine Monahan took a trip to the Pulgas Water Temple. We find her standing inside the room-sized structure surrounded by tall stone columns.

Katherine Monahan: In the center of the temple you can look down through a hot-tub sized opening and see a stream of water running underneath. It’s just seconds away from spilling into the Crystal Springs Reservoir.

Mitch Postel: This now has a grate on top. To keep kids from diving in.

Katherine Monahan: Mitch Postel used to come here as a teenager in the 60’s. Now he’s the president of the San Mateo County Historical Society.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): Did people jump in and go down the slide?

Mitch Postel: Yeah. So they would they would jump in here
Katherine Monahan (in scene): Did you?
Mitch Postel: I’m not gonna say.

Katherine Monahan: Carvings of lions’ heads and curling foliage decorate the top of the temple. And around its crown is an inscription in giant letters that hints at this structure’s history.

Mitch Postel: It says, “I will give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people.” And so that is in the Bible.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): Kind of grandiose, no?
Mitch Postel: Oh, yeah.

Katherine Monahan: The story of this place starts back in the 1770s, when the Spanish first settled in what is now San Francisco. The location they chose was perfect for controlling the entrance to the Bay — and from there, the interior of California.

Mitch Postel: But for every other reason, it was a terrible place to establish a mission. I mean, the sun never seemed to shine, sorry San Franciscans. The soil was very sandy. But the worst problem was and they realized this from the beginning was water.

Katherine Monahan: There just wasn’t much of it. There was Mountain Lake in the Presidio, and Mission Creek. And that was enough for the few hundred people living there until . . . the Gold Rush, when the population ballooned.

Mitch Postel: Drinking water had to be barged in from Marin County in barrels, the barrels were strapped to the sides of donkeys and mules and sold in the streets of San Francisco.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): For how much?
Mitch Postel: As much as a gold dollar a bucket.
Katherine Monahan (in scene): $1 a gallon-ish. Yeah. That doesn’t sound all bad.
Mitch Postel: Whoah. Think about, you know, 1850 when, you know, the average American worker was making about 75 cents a day.

Katherine Monahan: All right, let’s do a little math. These days, the average American uses upwards of 100 gallons of water per day — most of it for flushing the toilet and bathing. But back then, those niceties would have cost more than 100 times your income.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): Any thoughts about how that impacted like general hygiene?
Mitch Postel: Well, you know, I’m sure it didn’t help.

Katherine Monahan: As the population grew, San Francisco became more and more dependent on a private company called Spring Valley Water, which had bought up the fresh water sources to the south of the city.

Their prices were extreme, but San Francisco was at the tip of a peninsula, what else could they do?

Mitch Postel: It was a monopoly. And I believe by 1880, something like 20% of the city’s entire public budget was going into Spring Valley Water Company.

Katherine Monahan: So the city started searching for fresh water elsewhere. They asked the Federal Government for rights to the Tuolumne River, up in Yosemite National Park. But the Secretary of the Interior said no, you can’t build a dam in a national park. And that was that. Until . . .

Sounds of shaking

1906 . . . when a massive earthquake struck San Francisco, causing fires that the city couldn’t put out, in part because there wasn’t enough water. Much of the city was destroyed.

Mitch Postel: And so that became a big rallying cry for San Franciscans that hey, we really need to be a city that owns its own water supply.

Katherine Monahan: The federal government responded to the pressure. And over the passionate objections of environmentalists, the city built a dam over 150 miles away, in the Hetch Hetchy Valley and began work on a giant aqueduct to bring the water all the way here. It’s the only time Congress has ever allowed a dam in an already-established national park.

The Spring Valley Water Company realized its monopoly was coming to an end, so it offered to sell out to San Francisco.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): Once they got the Hetch Hetchy, did they even really need Spring Valley?
Mitch Postel: Well, yeah, they had to have a place to put the water.
Katherine Monahan (in scene): I see. So Hetch Hetchy gives a source.
Mitch Postel: Yes.
Katherine Monahan (in scene): they build the aqueduct. But then they need storage.
Mitch Postel: Yes.
Katherine Monahan (in scene): And those are these reservoirs here in the peninsula.
Mitch Postel: That’s correct.

Katherine Monahan: San Francisco bought out Spring Valley Water and all the infrastructure it owned. Which included not just reservoirs, but a giant water temple (PDF) in Sunol, near Fremont.

It’s a replica of the ancient Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, which is near where several aqueducts came together on their way to Rome. One of the Spring Valley owners was a fan of the classics and he had it built in 1910, to mark where three water sources came together on their way to San Francisco.

When the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct was completed in 1934, the city held a grand event to celebrate. It built a second temple at the end of the aqueduct. And some 20,000 people came out to watch mountain water flow through the circular Roman temple, onto the peninsula for the first time.

Steven Ritchie: Except it was just a temporary temple, it was wood and plaster.

Katherine Monahan: Steven Ritchie is with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Steven Ritchie: And they celebrated it and it was a great event. And then after the event was over, they tore it down and the permanent temple was built here, which is about a quarter mile away from the edge of the reservoir.

Katherine Monahan: For years, all the water from the Hetch Hetchy system passed through this temple.

Katherine Monahan (in scene): So at the time that it was built, this really was like, the end of the hose.
Steven Ritchie: Yes, absolutely.
Katherine Monahan (in scene): Okay,
Steven Ritchie: A really big hose.
Katherine Monahan: The Hetch Hetchy system transformed San Francisco. From desperately needing water, it gained such abundance that it now supplies it to much of the south and east bay.

The mountain water is exceptionally clear and clean.

Steven Ritchie: It’s so pure coming off the granite in the snow melts in the Sierra, we don’t have to filter it.

Katherine Monahan: Ritchie takes me out to walk on the dam of the Crystal Springs Reservoir – the one the temple flows into. It holds about 20 billion gallons of water when it’s full.

Steven Ritchie: So it’s come all the way across the width of California to get to this point. It flows by gravity, all the way here.

Katherine Monahan: The reservoir is vast and glittering. And the aqueduct that feeds it is over 150 miles long. Its builders brought supplies high into the mountains with no roads or power and tunneled through granite.

Steven Ritchie: This was a grand endeavor, and is a tremendous engineering feat. This is the lifeblood of 2.7 million people here.

Katherine Monahan: When you turn on your sink in San Francisco, 85% of the water that comes out is from Hetch Hetchy. And it’s delicious.

So, San Francisco solved its water problems, but the consequences to our east were dire for both people and wildlife.

Let’s head upstream now. Peter Drekmeier is with the Tuolumne River Trust.

Peter Drekmeier: Of all the rivers in California’s Central Valley, the salmon population is worst off in the Tuolumne River, and it happens to be San Francisco’s water source.

Katherine Monahan: Drekmeier says salmon numbers in the river are down to about 1% of historical levels. By diverting the Tuolumne’s water through the temple, into reservoirs like Crystal Springs — and from there into our sinks and toilets — we are reducing the river’s flow.

Peter Drekmeier: And with less flow, the water gets a lot warmer, and it actually favors non native fish like bass, which are now out competing the native fish.

Katherine Monahan: To try to restore the ecosystem in the Tuolumne and the delta it flows into, the California State Water Board adopted the Bay Delta Plan. It would increase flows in the river, which means the Bay Area would need to take less water from it.

Peter Drekmeier: And San Francisco immediately sued. So we modeled what would happen if the Bay Delta Plan were implemented. And we found that San Francisco could easily manage it without running out of water.

Katherine Monahan: The city disagrees, and is still fighting the plan in court.

If you follow the water system farther upstream into the Sierra Nevada, you come to its beginning — the Hetch Hetchy Valley. It was home to Native Americans for thousands of years. Now it’s underwater, flooded by the O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Aanthony Lerma is stewardship coordinator with the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation.

Aanthony Lerma: Those rivers have ran red so many times throughout this history. Like, that’s blood water that a lot of those people in the Bay are drinking.

Katherine Monahan: When the Gold Rush started San Francisco looking for new water sources, it also sent miners into the Sierra Nevada, displacing or killing the locals. Yosemite became a stronghold for native Californians, since it was remote and enclosed. Until a state-sponsored militia came and burned their villages, making way for what would become a national park, and eventually a dam.

Aanthony Lerma: The government came up here and forcefully took a lot of this land. You know a state-funded militia took most of this land and killed a lot of the people up here.

Katherine Monahan: Lerma is surprised to learn about the giant water temples over on the other side of the state.

Aanthony Lerma: It seems very removed from what’s what the real story and relationship is with the water system, and how it’s getting there and where it’s really coming from.

He says we should think about alternatives.

Aanthony Lerma: At least some type of representation even down there? They built a big ol’ like nice, Roman, Greek, whatever aqueduct thing? How about you build something that’s more representative of the California history, our indigenous history as Californians?

Sound of water rushing

Katherine Monahan: Back at the Pulgas Water Temple, I lean over the opening in the center, the one kids used to jump into, the one 20,000 people came out to see … and listen to the water that we are taking from the river. The water that is both the lifeblood of a city and blood water.

Water rushing sound transitions into music 

Olivia Allen-Price: That was KQED’s Katherine Monahan.

There is much, much more to learn about Hetch Hetchy and drinking water in the Bay Area. Check out our show notes for some resources on where you can learn more.

This episode of Bay Curious was made by Katrina Schwartz, Bianca Taylor, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia-Allen Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana, Maha Sanad, Holly Kernan and the entire KQED Family.

I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Thank you for listening.