The Dream of a Smokeless City
Boosterism meets industrial ambition as White Bluffs looks toward the construction of a massive hydroelectric 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.
The Priest Rapids power site can no longer be claimed as a local, state or even a national institution. The dream of the scientists is to harness this water to the industry of the country. They see the first extensive realization of this dream in the expectation that work will soon be started on the exploitation of the waters of the Columbia River at Priest Rapids in the State of Washington. The scheme aims at the mobilization of 800,000 h.p. in electricity. With this it is proposed to convert one hundred thousand acres of harsh and arid land into flourishing farms; to run dozens of industrial plants; and to establish a large and brand new city which shall be coalless and smokeless and spotlessly clean.
“The dream of the scientists is to harness this water to the industry of the country.”
The Priest Rapids vision of a 'coalless and smokeless' industrial utopia reflects a recurring cycle in the Columbia Basin, where massive technological interventions are promised to transform a 'bleak' landscape into an economic powerhouse. The eventual construction of the Priest Rapids Dam fundamentally altered the ecology of the river and the history of the surrounding communities.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.