The $15 Million Dream That Would Turn Horse Heaven Green
A consulting engineer told the irrigation district it could transform 300,000 dry acres with a vast Klickitat River storage and canal system—if voters backed an enormous bond issue and bought out private water-right claims.
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.
Report of O. Laurgaard, consulting engineer, on the proposed Horse Heaven irrigation project in the Klickitat River basin. The project contemplated seven storage reservoirs—Two Lakes, Fish Lake, Caldwell Prairie, McCreedy Creek, Piscoe Creek, Tepee Creek and Missouri Flat—with a combined capacity of about 297,480 acre-feet. Careful study of the Klickitat flow showed 267,800 acre-feet available for storage and about 345,000 acre-feet available from natural flow in a normal year.
The report recommended purchase of the water rights, franchises and surveys of the Klickitat Irrigation Power Co., as well as the water rights and lands of the Northwestern Electric Co. and Wilbur S. Yearsley, at estimated costs of $200,000 and $125,000 respectively. The estimated cost of the complete project, including storage, the Big Muddy and West Fork canals, 120 miles of main canal, laterals, pumping plants and water-right acquisitions, was placed at $24,553,438 for 300,000 acres, or $81.84 per acre. Built in stages to serve 300,000 acres, the first unit was estimated at $15,387,788, or $51.29 per acre.
The consulting engineer concluded the project was feasible if constructed in stages and by units, and recommended that the board appoint a consulting board of two engineers and two attorneys. He advised purchase of the existing water rights and franchises and the voting and issuance of bonds—at least $500,000, and perhaps $15,000,000—to begin construction. The estimates were based on high war prices; should materials, supplies and labor fall toward normal, the report said, a saving of 10 to 18 per cent might be effected.
“It is believed that the lands under the Horse Heaven district project when supplied with a good water right are good security for bonds up to the extent of $100 per acre.”
The Horse Heaven scheme did not materialize as this engineer imagined, but the argument it exposed—private water rights versus public reclamation, and who pays for huge irrigation works—still shapes Eastern Washington. Modern fights over Columbia Basin water, drought-year allocations and costly storage projects rhyme with the engineer’s arithmetic.
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