The Bid for a Government Power Giant
Senator Poindexter eyes Priest Rapids as the potential site for a massive $20 million federal nitrate and munitions facility.
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.
If Senator Poindexter has his way, Priest Rapids, instead of being developed by private capital, will become a big nitrate plant, owned and developed by the government. Twenty million dollars have been appropriated for such a plant and Senator Poindexter believes that Priest Rapids is the place where it should be spent. A board consisting of army engineers, ordnance officers, and agricultural representatives will be delegated the duty of making recommendations for the site. One of the first questions will be whether it is cheaper to make nitrates by hydroelectric power or as a byproduct from coal. Senator Poindexter noted that the office of army engineers tentatively lists Priest Rapids as a potential site, and he emphasized the strategic importance of building a powder factory on the Pacific seaboard, which would require the proximity of a nitrate plant.
“I believe that, however, the purely military considerations might very well be emphasized.”
This 1916 legislative push for a government-led hydroelectric project at Priest Rapids was a precursor to the massive federal transformation of the Columbia River Basin. Decades later, that vision of industrial scale would manifest in the Hanford Site, turning the geography discussed here into the center of the Manhattan Project.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.