The Bid for the Priest Rapids Nitrate Plant
Federal cabinet members are set to investigate the Columbia River as a potential industrial powerhouse for national defense.
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Three members of President Wilson’s cabinet, acting as a special committee, will investigate the possibilities of Priest Rapids on the Columbia River as a site for a proposed federal nitrate plant. The local chamber of commerce has been lobbying hard for the site, noting that congress has appropriated $20,000,000 for nitrate development. Nitrate is manufactured by electricity and requires a location with immense power capacity. In initial discussions, only the Priest Rapids site in Washington and Mussel Shoals in Alabama were considered to have the necessary potential. Lieutenant Colonel C. Keller of the Corps of Engineers has confirmed that Priest Rapids is under official consideration and the committee is currently planning their itinerary for site visits.
“Hearings before the house committee brought out that water power on the scale necessary to this enterprise was available only at Mussel Shoals in Alabama, and at Priest Rapids, on the Columbia river.”
The Priest Rapids site discussed here would eventually be transformed by the massive Priest Rapids Dam, a project central to the region's hydro-industrial identity. This 1917 fight mirrors contemporary debates over who controls the Columbia's power and the legacy of federal intervention in the Pacific Northwest’s landscape.
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