Kennewick’s Infrastructure Bottleneck
A local commentary argues that without modern dock and freight facilities, the city will fail to leverage its position on the Columbia River.
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.
Well, the river is open and the opportunity is at our door. The boats come up and down the river, but are we of a size to seize upon our opportunity? This is the question for Kennewick to answer. Suppose a big firm in San Francisco or Portland makes inquiries about our facilities to transfer freight. What could we answer? Why, the cost of transfer with our mediaeval means would be so great as to make the proposition ridiculous. We would have to load from the boat onto teams and haul the goods to the freight depots. With our baby outfit of a dock, what can we do? But if we had a large dock with a large warehouse and cars coming right to the boat with modern facilities to load and unload, we could advertise to handle freight and seize the opportunity by the forelock. Have any one of you tried to shoot a 22 shell through a 44 rifle? That is what we are trying to do with our foolish and inadequate means of transfer. Our opportunities are of the 44 calibre, but if we are satisfied to be a 22 shell, our opportunities will laugh at us and leave us in the cold. It is not the strawberries which are going to make Kennewick—it is the jobbing proposition, the transfer of freight from water to rail and from rail to water.
“Have any one of you tried to shoot a 22 shell through a 44 rifle? That is what we are trying to do with our foolish and inadequate means of transfer.”
This 1913 argument about regional industrial competitiveness and infrastructure investment mirrors modern debates in the Tri-Cities regarding how to best leverage local geography to attract and retain new logistics and manufacturing sectors.
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