100 years ago today in Spokane: Work starts on irrigation project

Crews were ready to begin preliminary surveying work on what was called the Columbia basin irrigation project – but this was not the irrigation project that we are familiar with today.

This was an audacious plan to carry water via canal and pipeline halfway across the state – to arid central Washington – from Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River.

Proponents, including the state hydraulic engineer, had not secured full funding – or anything near it – for this $100 million project. Yet the Washington state Legislature had appropriated $100,000 for some advance planning work.

From the crime beat: Ruth Garrison, 18, confessed to killing the wife of an Okanogan auto mechanic by stirring poison into her fruit cocktail.

She did it, she said, because she was in love with the woman’s husband.

“I was crazy,” said Garrison, who was just out of high school. “I didn’t think of anything but wanting to be with him.”

The killing occurred in Seattle, where the two women met for lunch in a tea room. Garrison had previously denied any involvement in the woman’s death. But then another tea room patron came forward and told police she saw Garrison reach across the table and stir something into the woman’s fruit cocktail.