The Persistent Quest for a Columbia River Park
A summer-long civic debate over turning a river island into a public park hits a familiar bureaucratic snag.
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.
That question which is asked one hundred and thirty-one times between the hours of one and five p. m., and between the Vibber-Gifford Drug store and Lynch’s corner, reminds us: 'Wouldn’t a nice, cool, shady, grass-grown park with the waves of the Columbia rippling along its edges be mighty fine?' In reply to a letter from Secretary Swayze of the Commercial club, Western Land Agent Plummet of the Northern Pacific Railroad writes that his company will consider a lease for the island in the Columbia, but only if the community shows they are prepared to develop it. It seems this park question gets to be a very warm issue every summer and we are about in the same place we were ten years ago. The island is still there and just as bare as ever.
“It seems that this park question gets to be a very warm issue every summer and apparently we are about in the same place we were ten years ago.”
Public access to the Columbia riverfront remains a major civic conversation in Kennewick today. This 1915 editorial captures the cyclical frustration of citizens demanding green space against the slow, transactional pace of corporate landholders and local government.
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