Our History

Celebrate the extraordinary events and memorable leaders who conceived, designed and built San Francisco’s water system with foresight to provide today’s Bay Area with high quality drinking water supplies.

San Francisco’s water system developed over time from the streams and wells of its earliest days to today’s complex system of dams, reservoirs, tunnels and pipelines that brings water from the high Sierra Nevada by gravity across California to join from the East Bay and San Francisco Peninsula.

A History of the Municipal Water Department & Hetch Hetchy System