The Desert That Could Bloom: Pasco’s Irrigation Revival
Philadelphia capital revives an abandoned Palouse canal project, promising water for 5,000 acres this summer and eventually 15,000 acres near Pasco.
Telegraphic orders have been received from Philadelphia to commence work on what promises to become one of the greatest irrigation projects ever started on the coast. While east this spring, Joshua Pierce of Tacoma reorganized the Palouse Irrigation Company, which built ten miles of irrigation canal in Whitman County four years ago but left it uncompleted when the financial depression came on. The reorganized company, which will vigorously push the work to completion, includes Joshua Harris, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad; President Samuel Shipley, of the Provident Life and Trust Company; and George Burnham, of the Baldwin Locomotive Works.
Sixteen miles of ditch will be completed this summer. This will water 5,000 acres in the Washtucna Valley, which is tapped by the Oregon Railway Navigation branch line to Connell. Next year the system will be extended farther. The most important feature of the project is the fact that in the narrow Washtucna Valley, surrounded by high hills, lies the greatest natural reservoir available for irrigation purposes in the state. This reservoir is fourteen miles long by half a mile wide, and has a natural dam which will give twenty-five feet of water for its entire length; by artificially raising the dam 25 feet higher, the quantity of water available can be doubled.
Engineers have recently ascertained that this reservoir will supply plenty of water for the irrigation of 15,000 acres situated about Pasco, which is forty miles from the reservoir and 500 feet lower. The old adage of boom time, “Keep your eye on Pasco,” is being revived, for it is now certain that the great desert of Franklin and Adams counties can be made as productive as the irrigated Yakima and Walla Walla valleys. It is expected that water will be distributed over the vast area as fast as the demand will warrant. The water is to be taken from the Palouse River, and every spring the big reservoir will be filled from the Washtucna River, insuring an ample supply. — Tacoma Ledger.
“The old adage of boom time, “Keep your eye on Pasco,” is being revived, for it is now certain that the great desert of Franklin and Adams counties can be made as productive as the irrigated Yakima and Walla Walla valleys.”
The irrigation of the Columbia Basin did transform Franklin and Adams counties, and Pasco became a hub of that agricultural economy. The same questions—who controls the water, who profits from new infrastructure, and how fast growth should come—still shape the region today.
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