The Ghost of a Industrial Metropolis
A century ago, planners envisioned Priest Rapids as the 'Niagara Falls of the West,' a massive industrial city of 50,000 destined to power the Pacific Northwest. It never arrived.
Following the announcement of the Washington Irrigation Development Company's application for a permanent license for the Priest Rapids dam, observers suggest this development could solve the problem of bringing population and payrolls to Washington. Economists predict the project will advance the state's progress by a quarter of a century, creating an industrial city of 50,000 supported by electro-chemical factories. General Electric interests intend to build the world's largest power dam at a cost of $100,000,000. With ready access to limestone, clay, and phosphate, supporters hope Priest Rapids will become a hub for manufacturing chemicals, aluminum, and steel, eventually transforming the arid landscape into a thriving, irrigated hinterland.
“It has been over and over the old nonsense tale of the butterscotch that could not run till it got warm and could not get warm till it ran. Perhaps the Priest Rapids development will answer all questions.”
This 1928 vision of a booming industrial metropolis at Priest Rapids predated the federal construction of the actual dam, which eventually fueled the Manhattan Project. While it never became a center for private chemical manufacturing as envisioned, it irrevocably reshaped the region's ecology and demography, underscoring how boosterism often projects a 'future' that arrives in unexpected, state-controlled forms.
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