Dreaming of the Priest Rapids Dam
Community leaders and residents meet to push for federal involvement in the massive irrigation project that promised to transform the river valley.
The story, cleaned up
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A fairly representative crowd was present Monday night in Codding Hall at the public meeting called by the Commercial Club for the purpose of ascertaining the sentiment of the local people about interesting the government in the building of the Priest Rapids dam and the irrigation of the lands on both sides of the river below that place. It was not by any means a wild and woolly crowd, but there seemed to be a unanimous, quiet and sincere desire that an earnest effort be made to find out just what the government will do. A resolution was passed authorizing a committee to enlist, if possible, the efforts of the other commercial and civic bodies of the state in urging the government to develop the Priest Rapids site, not only for the irrigation benefits but also because of the great industrial development that will follow in the state and because the building of a dam at that point will add another link in an open river from British Columbia to the sea.
“It was not by any means a wild and woolly crowd, but there seemed to be a unanimous, quiet and sincere desire that an earnest effort be made to find out just what the government will do.”
The Priest Rapids dam was a pivotal ambition for early 20th-century residents hoping to turn arid land into a garden. Today, the dam stands as a reality that fundamentally altered the Columbia River's ecology and the lives of those living on its banks.
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