This day in history: Gerald Ford calls new Kootenai River dam ‘balance between environmental concerns and technological needs’

From 1975: President Gerald Ford officially “switched on” the Libby Dam near Libby, Montana.

About 5,000 spectators gathered at the 420-foot-tall dam on the Kootenai River. Ford lauded the dam as a symbol of the “balance between environmental concerns and technological needs.”

The event had a few “undercurrents of controversy,” in part because Ford switched on only one of the dam’s four initial generators. The others were not completed. Some union leaders called it “senseless” to dedicate a dam that was yet to be completed.

Also, some Canadian officials expressed concern that Canada came out on the “short end of the stick” in Columbia River watershed negotiations.

Ford said the dam would provide both “homegrown energy” and flood control.

“There’s a television commercial which says it’s not nice to fool mother nature,” Ford said. “This dam will help us to keep mother nature from fooling us.”

From 1925: Burrill Dean Exley, “27-month-old mental wizard,” of the Spokane Valley, was said to be challenging Billy Burkett, “27-month-old athletic wonder,” of Moscow, Idaho, in the Spokane Interstate Fair’s Baby Contest.

Burrill “knew every letter in the alphabet” at 17 months, and now “can spell more than a dozen words,” according to his parents.

Billy “excels in several infant strength feats,” said his parents. He could perform “several stunts in balancing and infant athletics.”

Both toddlers would take on all comers in the Baby Contest.