The Promised Metropolis on the Columbia
A booster report envisions a massive industrial city of 50,000 residents rising from the sagebrush desert at Priest Rapids.
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.
Excerpts from the Christian Science Monitor detail the proposed Priest Rapids development. Dr. Charles Steinmetz recommended the project to the General Electric Company, aiming to make Priest Rapids a western center for electro-chemical industries, mirroring Niagara Falls. The plan includes reclaiming 70,000 acres of volcanic ash desert through irrigation, with crops like alfalfa, corn, and cotton. The town is planned with a design similar to Washington, D.C., and an expected population of 50,000 within five years. Construction is slated to begin pending a Federal Power Commission permit, with much of the building using tufa rock. The regional infrastructure will include a dam bridging the river and straightened railroad lines.
“The city and plant are to be on the east bank of the river, at the swiftest part of the rapids. The dam crosses on three islands, one channel at a time to be built.”
This 1924 vision of a massive industrial 'city of the future' at Priest Rapids never materialized as a metropolis, though the site was later transformed by the Manhattan Project during the 1940s to become the Hanford Site. The dream of a utopian agricultural city gave way to one of the most significant, and controversial, industrial and military zones in American history.
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