To start with, in the early twentieth-century there was a high demand for water in San Francisco which resulted in the suggestion to build a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley which would ultimately flood the Hetch Hetchy and terminate thousands of acres of intact forests. As a result, there was much debate between two early American environmentalists, Gifford Pinchot and John Muir who introduced two opposing views conservation and preservation. Pinchot a founder and leader of the conservation movement supported the idea of building the dam over Hetch Hetchy, Pinchot’s main view was that public lands exist to serve the needs and uses of the public. While on the other hand, John Muir who was the best-known representative of the preservation movement