Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-07-07

details as he went. He wrote his
story as though the Grand Coulee
dam we're already practically built.
The next days Wenatchee World
carried the story in type so large that
everything else on the front page van
ished into insignificance
The opening paragraph read:
The last, the newest. the most am
bilious idea in the Way of reclama-
ton and the development Of water
power ever formulated i now in proc
ess of development. The idea con-
templates turning the Columbia River
back into its old bed in Grand Coulee
by the construction Of a giant dam,
the reclamation of between one and
two million acres of land in Grant,
Adams and Franklin Counties and
the development of a water power
approximating Niagara Falls. 1t was
first conceived by William Clapp of
Ephrata, who kept it under his hat
for several months owing to the fact
that it appeared at first too much of
an evanesCent dream. But as the idea
began to develop he talked it over
with some of his FRIENDS. 1t so ap-
pealed to the Grant County commits
sioners that they have sent the coun-
ty engineer to look the matter up
from an engineers standpoint
That was in July. 1918 Years
passed and hopes for the dam waxed
and waned. The people of the Big
Bend scraped together meager
$4,000 Small farm owners and little
shopkeepers subscribed from their
earnings. Big Bend folk told O'Sul-
Ivan to pack up and go to Washing
ton until the leagues funds ran out
which they did so suddenly that he
had to get back home the best way
he could.
Gets Famed Builder.
An idea had been breeding in Jim
O'Sullivan's mind Finding himself
in Coulee City one Sunday in a de
serted hotel, the idea suddenly ger
minated. He sat down at the hotel
desk to write. There was no station
cry in the desk, but he found a piece
of brown paper. On that he wrote an
invitation to the greatest engineer he
knew of to come and pass Judgment
on the Grand Coulee. That engineer
was Col. Cooper, internationally
known builder of dams
1t was a successful coup on O'Sul-
livan's part, for Col. Cooper approved
the practicability of the dam from an
engineering standpoint and saw the
vast possibilities for development of
the region. Shortly after his visit,
A. P. Davis, head of the Government
Reclamation Service, added his in
dorsement. Final action came when
the Army engineers under Lieut.. John
S. Butler came to Washington in
1929. They gave their unqualified ap-
proval to Grand Coulee.
Carrying in its waters a $4,000, 900
annual crop of salmon, bathing the
most extensive stands of timber in
the country, holding the waters that
are the very life of arid stretches,
with the greatest potential power OF
any stream in the country, the Co.
lumbia could not possibly yield its
power effectively to any private COM
pany or companies, nor to any one
State, nor even one section.
1t binds two countries and serves
four States. Its mouth is on the
Pacific and part of its headwaters
flow through desert stretches. 1t IS
a river that has had to wait for a
day when individualistic control
merged into a larger concept. Its
potentialities are on such a scale that
they could never have yielded to de-
velopment by lesser power than that
of the united people for the good of
the whole people.
The Columbia has waited through
the ages for the dawn of the era of
power. 1t has not submitted to any
thing less than a master development,
and now the stage is being set for a
vast drama. The Oregon country has
always been our last frontier. And it