Shuttered businesses haunt this Eastern Washington town. Paint peels from silent storefronts.
Plywood replaces glass in a door that never opens.
A restaurant and gas station are dark. Decades of declining farm income have almost sucked Washtucna dry. This year, with wheat prices at a near 30-year low, some farmers talk openly of quitting. So, when government agents came here recently to discuss breaching four Snake River dams to help save disappearing salmon runs, the response was bitter and angry. Here in the wheat fields of the Palouse, emotions on the Snake River dams run hotter than the August sun.