A Grand Dedication at Codding Hall
The entire valley converged on White Bluffs to christen the town’s first modern amusement venue with a night of dancing and patriotic fervor.
It is seldom indeed that the weather man passes us out such an ideal day for the Fourth as he did this year. Neighbors gathered together in some shady nook in a great many places in the valley with full lunch baskets. In the evening, everybody—not only from White Bluffs, but from Hanford, Priest Rapids, Allard, and Arrowsmith—gathered to dedicate the handsome new Andrew Codding hall, the first really modern amusement place in the valley. The town was brilliantly lighted for the occasion and the hall itself was a bower of beauty. By 10 o’clock the big hall was full of orchestra music and happy dancers. A pretty and patriotic stunt was planned: a rifle hidden in drapery was to discharge and unfurl an American flag over the heads of the dancers. The mechanism failed, but the flag was eventually deployed by hand. At midnight the crowd flocked to the Boag hotel for a light lunch, catching the orchestra from Pasco, under the direction of A. Reider, who captured the hearts as well as the feet of the dancers. Much of the credit for the hall decorations and street lights is due Lou Helpenstell and Fred Gilhuly, who worked night and day to bring out the big idea.
“Day was breaking in the east when the crowd finally dispersed, all of the same mind—that it was the best dance they had ever attended in the valley.”
The Andrew Codding Hall represented the high-water mark of community life in the original White Bluffs townsite. Today, the entire area—along with the rest of the town—is gone, erased by the creation of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation during World War II.
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