The Promised City of White Bluffs
Speculators and civil engineers move to transform 5,000 acres of Columbia River land into an irrigated agricultural hub, complete with a new town and river transport.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Exclusive information indicates that W. R. Todd of Tacoma and associates contemplate making extensive improvements on their large holdings along the west bank of the Columbia River. The plan is to construct an irrigating canal from Priest Rapids to White Bluffs, a distance of about twenty miles, to cover 5,000 acres of land. As the land is higher than the river, water will be pumped using the Columbia's own power. Mr. Todd, who individually owns 6,000 acres in the vicinity, has resumed operations in the sinking of an artesian well. Mr. Todd and his associates have concluded to lay out a town at White Bluffs. Marble Bros., civil engineers, have been employed to lay out the new town as well as to run the lines for the proposed canal. The promoters have agreed to place a boat on the river early next spring to ply between White Bluffs and Kennewick, which will furnish the new town transportation until a better system is devised.
“White Bluffs, which will be the name of the new town, will become a city of importance in due time.”
This 1903 boosterism captures the era of 'irrigation fever' that birthed many Washington agricultural towns. White Bluffs itself would eventually be 'lost' to history, forcibly evacuated and demolished in 1943 for the Manhattan Project's Hanford Site.
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