100 years ago in Spokane: Washington State College professor envisions irrigated Columbia basin

Professor O.L. Waller of Washington State College in Pullman shared a vision of the future for Central and Eastern Washington, a future blooming with greenery and crops.

He was dreaming of the Columbia Basin irrigation project – a project that in 1920 was still theoretical.

“When the Columbia basin is all irrigated one of the great liabilities of the state of Washington will have been converted into an equally great asset; a dust-blown desert will have been converted into a productive empire,” wrote the professor in a lengthy Spokesman-Review essay. “Instead of scattered shacks, the remains of wrecked homes and blighted hopes, in infinite variety there will arise beautiful homes, bulging barns, and granaries rivaling those of ancient Egypt.

“The dust will cease to blow, the landscape will be covered with green; grasses and grains will wave in the breeze and bands of sheep and herds of cattle will be seen on every side. … The development of such an empire, larger than the state of Delaware, will add a half-million people to the state of Washington.”

Professor Waller’s prediction would turn out to be mostly correct – but not in the way he expected. He, along with other Eastern Washington leaders, believed that the water for Columbia Basin irrigation would come not from gigantic dams on the Columbia River, but from the Pend Oreille River. A complex system of canals, tunnels and artificial lakes would deliver water from the Pend Oreille River southwest through Spokane, through Bonnie Lake and Rock Lake, and westward into the vast Columbia Basin. In all, it would require 33 miles of tunnels, and more than a hundred miles of canals.

The daunting scope of this system did not seem to faze Professor Waller.

“I have no doubt but that sometime the Columbia basin project will be built,” he said. “This may be soon or it may be many years ahead.”