The U.S President Theodore Roosevelt became acquainted with
the naturalist John Muir in 1903. Muir guided the President through the
Yosemite wilderness, and convinced him to establish the Yosemite National Park,
the first in the country. Muir opposed the damming of the Hetchy Hetchy Valley,
known for its granite formations, and wrote to Roosevelt against it. However,
Roosevelt’s successors, not Roosevelt, approved the dam. So the two did not had
a solid disagreement.
Iwo Jima - although not strictly a stepping stone it gave the US an airbase that was reasonably far forward and at the same time deprived the Japanese of an airbase allowing bombing raids on mainland Japan to proceed with less interference.
