We were
way-bored with I-90 and looking for a good Mexican breakfast so we turned south
off the Interstate on Highway 17 and headed toward Othello, Washington.
Our destination was Spokane, still 100 miles away, but we had time, it was a
lovely day and if we ate half an hour later in the morning we could probably
justify a beer with our huevos rancheros.
Othello is
the biggest town in sparsely populated Adams County -- 19,000 -- a county that
was carved out of Whitman County in 1883.
The county has a curious look to it, as if it were Nebraska upside down
and Othello is splat dab in the center of the panhandle. It is also at the
center of the state’s potato country with some dry land wheat and apple
orchards thrown in and is one of two Washington state counties with a majority
Hispanic population.
We found
the Benavidez on the southern end of Main Street. It was in an old, large
building that looked like it might have served as a grocery store one day, but
today it looked like it was feeling its weight and gravity was giving it a hard
time. It appeared to be just getting up, slowly and a bit
unsteadily.
Four
or five farmhands sat at the dark bar drinking coffee. The number never
went below three or above five, but the personnel changed frequently, new people
walking past us in the otherwise empty tables to the bar, others getting up and
passing us going the other way. Greetings and goodbyes were mostly in
Spanish. A Fox News channel jabbered away behind the bar, the men
sometimes turning toward the glow, but the sound mercifully fell to the floor before
it got to our table.
All the
wall and shelf space in the Benevidez was full of photographs, knick-knacks and
paintings. President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez were
surrounded by many people we didn’t know at all, some in large painted
renderings, many of them in business suits, others in traditional garb with a
big sombrero. I thought of Sandburg’s “Sky Pieces,” wishing I could read
it right then with classic Sandburg drama, but recited it silently, so as not
to make a fuss.
SKY
PIECES
Proudly the
fedoras march on the heads of the somewhat careless men.
Proudly the slouches march on the heads of the still more careless men.
Proudly the panamas perch on the noggins of dapper debonair men.
Comically somber the derbies gloom on the earnest solemn noodles.
And the sombrero, most proud, most careless, most dapper and debonair of all, Somberly the sombrero marches on the heads of important men who know
what they want.
Proudly the slouches march on the heads of the still more careless men.
Proudly the panamas perch on the noggins of dapper debonair men.
Comically somber the derbies gloom on the earnest solemn noodles.
And the sombrero, most proud, most careless, most dapper and debonair of all, Somberly the sombrero marches on the heads of important men who know
what they want.
Hats are
sky-pieces; hats have a destiny; wish your hat slowly; your hat is you.
There is an
old woman, easily 80, maybe even in her 90s, serving coffee to the evolving
chorus in front of her, silently dropping menus on our table and, without
asking, setting up coffee cups and filling them. She is alone. I
imagine that her help went home after breakfast rush – around here that is most
likely at 6AM – and would return at 11:00 or so. At least I hoped that.
We ordered
the eggs and she came by with refills of coffee. Precisely at 10:00 AM,
we ordered our beers and the plates came minutes later. Good. Not
great, but authentic for sure. As we ate, she polished, one by one,
apples that she lifted from a box behind the bar. We paid and tipped well
and she brought back an apple for each of us which, as we headed up to Spokane,
we decided was probably the best apple we'd eaten in the past decade.
City of Othello |
Othello is
in the middle of the Columbia Basin Project, a mammoth irrigation project that
we usually attribute to the wrong Roosevelt, Franklin and his New Deal.
In fact, it rises from the Progressive Era and one of its creators, Theodore
Roosevelt, whose signature is on the Reclamation Act of 1902, the bill that
formed the United States Reclamation Service and placed it in the USGS, the
United States Geologic Survey. It was placed there because John Wesley
Powell had set out a strategy in his book, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the
United States, written
in 1878, three years before he took over the USGS.
John Wesley Powell About 1871 |
Later,
Powell climbs to the canyon rim and takes readings with the barometers that
show that he is standing 8,000 feet above sea level and 4,000 feet above the
river. Seven years earlier, Powell lost
his right arm at Shiloh.
Like
many westerners, Powell was bothered by both the geology and the politics of water. It was deeply
frustrating to watch all that water flowing by knowing that the soil chemistry of much of
the desert US would produce excellent crops. Also frustrating were the clumsy attempts by local
farmers to divert water to crops or cattle. He was frustrated by the laws
that grew up around water in the west, and how they favored individuals, often
to the disadvantage of the larger community. He watched in
disgust as eastern jurisdictions tapped into the federal treasury for rivers
and harbors improvements while western states went begging with their
irrigation ideas. He hated the speculation that was tying up lands in the
west and the lack of community development that federal inaction meant.
He saw the ideals of the Homestead Act perverted by the fact that so
much of the homesteading land in the west was not worth a damn without
water.
Powell’s USGS estimated that 30
million acres could be farmed if there was water yet, in 1890, four years
before he would leave the USGS, only 3.5 million acres of arid land were
actively farmed.
The
aptly named Francis Newlands, the only member of the House of Representatives
from the new state of Nevada, shared those ideas and frustrations and brought
them effectively to Congress. Newlands soon won over the Vice-President,
Teddy Roosevelt, though President McKinley thought it best to go slow on
irrigation. Six months after McKinley
died and Roosevelt became the President, Roosevelt signed Newlands’ Reclamation
Act, in 1902.
The
legislation committed the proceeds from the sales of federal lands to
irrigation projects in several states
and territories: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana,
Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah,
Washington, and Wyoming. Some of these
states were still territories in 1902 and Texas had no federally owned land,
but was added as a reclamation state in 1906.
The legislation had a strict ‘user
pays’ idea, requiring the beneficiaries of projects to pay their
share of the costs.
The first
five projects were soon underway. They were carefully selected for their
good politics, for the kinds of problems they presented that needed to be
solved and for their prospects of success.
Another criterion was whether there was a good possibility that towns
and communities would follow after the irrigation came in. In March of 1903, just eleven months after
the bill became law, the US Geological Survey recommended to the Secretary of
the Interior that water projects be started on the Sweetwater/North Platte in
Wyoming and Nebraska, the Milk River in Montana, the Truckee in Nevada, the Gunnison
in Colorado, and the Salt River in Central Arizona. A week later, Interior Secretary Ethan A.
Hitchcock concurred with the suggestions and authorized the Reclamation Service
to do what was necessary to get underway.
Bureau of Reclamation |
Soon, the
Reclamation Service was the largest developer of water projects on the globe,
building far too many projects too quickly and running into a lot of
trouble. In 1923, an investigatory body, The Fact Finder’s Commission,
showed that despite investing $135 million in water projects, repayment of just
$10 million was in the bank. There had been cost overruns and a number of
other unmet expectations.
As part of
the reform, payback provisions in loans were doubled from twenty to forty
years, but even then, several projects were abandoned, even when the money came
without interest. Electricity production
was allowed to became a major part of project economics. Other events intervened. The great Mississippi
flood set out a host of flood control projects on that river and those concepts soon
transferred to the Colorado River and Hoover Dam and would find their way later
to the Columbia.
During this
time of rethinking reclamation, the Columbia Basin Project had settled into an
argument between the pumpers, those who saw irrigation accomplished by building
a high dam at Grand Coulee and pumping water out of the impoundment behind the
dam and into a distribution system. The
other protagonists here were the ditchers.
They were largely private interests, led by Washington Water Power, who
would divert water from lakes in Idaho and the Pend Oreille River in
northeastern Washington into irrigation canals and send it by gravity, south
and west. It was also a cultural
fight. The ditchers were wealthy
businessmen who thought of the pumpers as hayseeds. The hayseeds won.
President
Hoover authorized a study of the Columbia River Project and the resulting
report advocated ten dams, some in British Columbia. Grand Coulee, the largest, was at an
elevation of 550 feet that would create a volume of water for both power and
irrigation. While the report was a
defeat for the ditchers, it was also a tremendous disappointment for the
pumpers. Franklin Roosevelt was
president by now and recommended a lower dam, similar in size to the Bonneville
Dam down river that would provide for power generation only.
There was a
compromise, however. The federal
government would provide the wherewithal to build the foundations of the dam in
such a way that additional height could be added if it seemed wise. The wisdom came early for Roosevelt. In three years he had reversed himself,
deciding that the higher dam was not only a good idea but among the most
important ideas in front of the country, so he federalized Grand Coulee and it
was managed by the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes.
It is easy
to wonder if FDR did this two-step dance as a political move because he needed to deflect criticism
of spending so much on one project – more than the Panama Canal! – or because
he was a guy who had the guts to look at information and change his mind.
Engine next to ice house Wade Stevenson |
Asahel Curtis |
Moses Lake Chamber |
"If Ephrata wants to taste the dust again, they'll have to import the stuff!"
Rita and Martin Seedorf, Eastern Washington historians, wrote in Columbia Magazine in 1994 about this booming optimism:
“The "Farm-in-a-Day" event began at 12:01 A.M. and continued until 11:30 P.M. on May 29, 1952. During that period 300 people worked to clear and level the land, build a house and out-buildings, and plant crops. The day became a full-blown media event covered by all major wire services, magazines, newspapers and newsreels of the day.
The completed farm was presented to Donald D. Dunn, "the nation's most worthy World War II veteran," who had been selected in a Veterans of Foreign Wars drawing.”
In 1952, the Bureau of Reclamation held several drawings in which thousands of veterans were entered. In Othello, the last of the drawings, 7,000 veterans were entered. Just 42 names were picked but they had the opportunity to buy the public properties that used to be desert.
Most of the irrigated land was private with the water managed and delivered by Irrigation Districts and other special purpose governments. The project kept growing through the sixties and Othello was well-positioned to not only grow crops, but add value through processing.
In 1961, Othello’s first frozen food packer, Othello Packers, begins processing peas, carrots and corn. The farmer commitment to potatoes pays off with another processor, Chef Ready French Fries in 1964. Soon Simplot is moving in, then Nestle, the Canadian processor, McClain.
Largely because of the Columbia Reclamation Project, Washington state provides 20% of all the potatoes grown in the country and is a very large processor of French fries. A large percentage of French fries eaten in America started on their way to the hot oil from Adams County. Nine of ten potatoes grown in Adams County and the state are used elsewhere with 75% of them in the form of French fries. If you eat a French fry in America, there is a high probability it will carry an Othello terroir.
The Columbia Basin Reclamation is an amazing infrastructure. Besides Grand Coulee there are seven small hydroelectric plants, three major reservoirs holding 11 and a half million acre feet of water, twelve pumping facilities – six at 65,000 horsepower and 9600 cubic feet per second -- and six at 67,500 horsepower – 10,200 cubic feet/second. There are 2360 miles of canals and laterals and 3438 miles of drains and wasteways irrigating 670,000 acres. It cost $531 million and $73 million has been paid by water users. About $458 million has been paid by Grand Coulee power sales.
The project is only half finished and some projects and facilities are on hold. The state gave water rights to additional users based on the assumption that the project would ultimately be completed, so the regional aquifer has and continues to be used faster than it can recharge.
The future issues close in and become uncomfortable, but I prefer to think about the here and now, the apple in my hand, the day ahead of us, playing golf in the afternoon at Indian Canyon, Spokane’s lovely golf course, the best ever built by the Works Progress Administration. I think with those who lived here, as they walked to their cars, as they contemplated the world after World War II, the irrigation coming closer and closer, that recovery is just around the corner.
East Adams Museum and Art Center |
Rita and Martin Seedorf, Eastern Washington historians, wrote in Columbia Magazine in 1994 about this booming optimism:
“The "Farm-in-a-Day" event began at 12:01 A.M. and continued until 11:30 P.M. on May 29, 1952. During that period 300 people worked to clear and level the land, build a house and out-buildings, and plant crops. The day became a full-blown media event covered by all major wire services, magazines, newspapers and newsreels of the day.
The completed farm was presented to Donald D. Dunn, "the nation's most worthy World War II veteran," who had been selected in a Veterans of Foreign Wars drawing.”
In 1952, the Bureau of Reclamation held several drawings in which thousands of veterans were entered. In Othello, the last of the drawings, 7,000 veterans were entered. Just 42 names were picked but they had the opportunity to buy the public properties that used to be desert.
Most of the irrigated land was private with the water managed and delivered by Irrigation Districts and other special purpose governments. The project kept growing through the sixties and Othello was well-positioned to not only grow crops, but add value through processing.
In 1961, Othello’s first frozen food packer, Othello Packers, begins processing peas, carrots and corn. The farmer commitment to potatoes pays off with another processor, Chef Ready French Fries in 1964. Soon Simplot is moving in, then Nestle, the Canadian processor, McClain.
Largely because of the Columbia Reclamation Project, Washington state provides 20% of all the potatoes grown in the country and is a very large processor of French fries. A large percentage of French fries eaten in America started on their way to the hot oil from Adams County. Nine of ten potatoes grown in Adams County and the state are used elsewhere with 75% of them in the form of French fries. If you eat a French fry in America, there is a high probability it will carry an Othello terroir.
The Columbia Basin Reclamation is an amazing infrastructure. Besides Grand Coulee there are seven small hydroelectric plants, three major reservoirs holding 11 and a half million acre feet of water, twelve pumping facilities – six at 65,000 horsepower and 9600 cubic feet per second -- and six at 67,500 horsepower – 10,200 cubic feet/second. There are 2360 miles of canals and laterals and 3438 miles of drains and wasteways irrigating 670,000 acres. It cost $531 million and $73 million has been paid by water users. About $458 million has been paid by Grand Coulee power sales.
The project is only half finished and some projects and facilities are on hold. The state gave water rights to additional users based on the assumption that the project would ultimately be completed, so the regional aquifer has and continues to be used faster than it can recharge.
The future issues close in and become uncomfortable, but I prefer to think about the here and now, the apple in my hand, the day ahead of us, playing golf in the afternoon at Indian Canyon, Spokane’s lovely golf course, the best ever built by the Works Progress Administration. I think with those who lived here, as they walked to their cars, as they contemplated the world after World War II, the irrigation coming closer and closer, that recovery is just around the corner.
Bob,
ReplyDeleteYou may want to read Robert Glennon's work on western water issues. It brings some of those "uncomfortable issues" home.
Robert Cromwell
The "Farm in a Day" event is fascinating. I would like to find out what happened to the 42 winners and their property throughout the years.
ReplyDeleteBob, my parents were one of the 42 winners of this land. they went up from Oregon City to look at the property-and my mother only needed one look-they spent the rest of their days in Oregon City. I still have the plans for the house they had planned on building there.Interesting article.
ReplyDeleteCould you send me a note about how I can be in touch? I plan on a later posting that would find some of those people who won the four drawings held in 1952 to see what happened to their lives. You can click on Connect and find me at Gallatin, Bobr@gallatin.com .
DeleteThanks for reading this post.