Visiting the eastern side of California’s San Joaquin Valley recently, I burned a lot of fossil fuel getting the lay of the land. The Valley: flat, semi-arid, and planted wall-to-wall with fruit trees, nut trees, cotton, corn, and alfalfa. Ditches -- some of them offshoots of the 152-mile Friant-Kern Canal -- paralleled roadways and fields, delivering relatively pristine surface water to farms, ranches, and giant dairies. Pumps pulled groundwater for domestic (and sometimes agricultural) use. To the east: the glorious golden foothills of the Sierra Nevada. High above them: the great water factory of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, from whence the Kings, Kern, Tule, and Kaweah Rivers flow west, through the foothills and into the ditches and drains of the valley, where they’re fought over tooth and nail.

I drove east and uphill early one morning to marvel at the sequoias, pay my respects to the General Sherman Tree, and ponder the mindset that, 70 years ago, decreed the nearly half million acres of Kings Canyon off limits to development and exploitation. (Thank you, Harold Ickes, who as Secretary of the Interior hired Ansel Adams to photograph the forests and canyons and sway public opinion.) Sequoia National Park, slightly smaller and to the south, had been established in 1890. Having done little upland research before this trip, I was astounded to see how few roads traversed these tracts. In fact, Kings Canyon is the second largest roadless area in the lower 48, and an astonishing 84 percent of the park is accessible only on foot. The longer I drove -- and the more jaw-dropping the views of the John Muir Wilderness and the alpine peaks of the Great Western Divide -- the more I marveled at the foresight of political leaders who could leave so much alone. Only around 4,000 people a year, out of 2 million park visitors, venture into the vast mountain fortress of the backcountry, with its granite canyons, subalpine meadows, and glacially scoured lakes -- the classic High Sierra landscape immortalized by Adams and countless nature-themed calendars. Despite the low visitation, the protections hold. At a time when states are finding it difficult to finance the repair of such basic infrastructure as bridges and water mains, how would we ever find the political will today, to say nothing of the money, to set aside wilderness for its own sake?

This landscape could have been carved into vacation homes, grazing allotments, timber yards, mines, or ski resorts (Disney tried the latter in the late 1970s, at the southern end of the park). But cooler heads and grander visions prevailed. Today’s visitors surely appreciate the spiritual and aesthetic values of these wildlands, but its managers don’t stress, in their communications with the general public, the topography’s intimate connection with the regional economy. Careening downhill from an elevation of 8,000 feet back to 300, one can’t help noting that the Sierra’s prodigious cascades, streams, and rivers -- with the help of dams, ditches and canals -- have combined and conspired to make the Valley one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. (And yes, this water is ultimately tainted by agricultural inputs, but that’s a story for another day.)

Top photo: Kaweah Peaks of the Sierra Nevada from Wikimedia Commons. Water rights postcard: Paul Stanton, Duckboy Cards