The Niagara of the West
Promoters promise a massive industrial city and the world's longest dam, envisioning Priest Rapids as a global manufacturing hub.
While readers are familiar with plans for the Priest Rapids power site, new details from H. J. Pierce, president of the Washington Irrigation Development Company, highlight the grand ambition. Priest Rapids, located near the center of Washington, sits 150 miles from Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. The Columbia River, the 12th largest in the world, holds immense power potential. The project intends to build a dam 90 feet high and two miles long—the longest in the world—to develop 400,000 horsepower. The goal is to induce the building of a major industrial city that would serve as the 'Niagara Falls of the West,' utilizing cheap hydroelectric power and limestone deposits to manufacture glass and iron products for the Pacific market.
“The dam will be 90 feet high and two miles long—the longest in the world—longer than the Assouan dam in Egypt.”
The grand vision of an industrial metropolis at Priest Rapids never materialized; instead, the area was later transformed by the Manhattan Project into the Hanford Site. The 'Niagara of the West' remains a ghost of a different regional future, one centered on heavy power-driven industry rather than the nuclear legacy that defined the site's mid-century reality.
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