A Perilous Race Down the Yakima
Two local men attempted a daring forty-mile trip down the Yakima River, barely surviving a confrontation with an irrigation company dam.
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.
Tom Giezentaner and Phil Bier set out on a forty-mile journey down the Yakima River in a fourteen-foot skiff. Starting from Kiona at 2:15 p.m., the trip turned harrowing when they encountered the Irrigation Company’s dam. Unable to steer away from the powerful current, they struck the structure at high speed and were forced to paddle with everything they had to navigate a mile of rapids. They finally landed safely at the Columbia Avenue dock in Kennewick at 9:15 p.m.
“Oars were laid aside and every nerve and muscle exerted at the paddles.”
This account captures the untamed nature of the local waterways before massive dam projects and irrigation systems fundamentally altered the geography of the Tri-Cities area. It serves as a reminder of how residents historically engaged with the raw, often dangerous, power of the local river systems.
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