Rufus Woods, Wenatchee Daily World editor, first advocated a high dam at Grand Coulee with a July 18, 1918 headline publicizing the idea. The Wenatchee Daily World became the mouthpiece for the Columbia Development League with Rufus Woods as president. For the next twenty-five years Woods wrote and made trips to Washington D.C., to seek federal assistance to build the huge dam at Grand Coulee. As the idea for a Grand Coulee Dam took hold, a struggle ensued between low dam proponents versus high dam advocates. The creation of public works programs during the Great Depression provided dam promoters with ammunition to push for the development of Grand Coulee. Federal funding, claimed promoters, would provide navigation, irrigation, hydropower, and most convincingly, jobs.

The following selections from Woods' articles illustrate some of the ways the newspaper drew public attention to what for many seemed a far-fetched idea.

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"FORMULATE BRAND NEW IDEA FOR IRRIGATION GRANT, ADAMS, FRANKLIN COUNTIES, COVERING MILLION ACRES OR MORE."

Last and newest and most ambitious idea contemplates turning the Columbia back into its old bed in Grand Coulee--the development of a waterpower equal to Niagara and the irrigation of a million acres or more. Idea first conceived by William Clapp of Ephrata. Woods, Rufus, Wenatchee Daily World (July 18, 1918).

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Some day at Grand Coulee there will be harnessed 2,000,000 wild horses--energy that today is wasting itself away day by day as it flows down the Columbia River, the wildest big stream in the civilized world.

. . . Such a power if developed would operate railroads, factories, mines, irrigation pumps, furnish heat and light in such measure that all in all it would be the most unique, the most interesting, and the most remarkable development of both irrigation and power in this age of industrial and scientific miracles.

. . . Now all in the world we want, gentlemen, is a slab of concrete right across here!
Rufus Woods, Wenatchee Daily World

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The article below comes from a series of editorials by Woods chronicling the history of eastern Washington. It reflects eastern derision toward the Pacific Northwest and government recognition of the economic potential of the Columbia River, evidenced by Secretary of the Interior Ray Layman Wilbur's visit to the dam site in 1932. Just two years later, in August of 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Grand Coulee where work had already begun.

Woods, Rufus, Wenatchee Daily World (July 12, 1932) 1.

As this article is written, Secretary of the Interior Ray Layman Wilbur is arriving in Spokane to look over the government projects of the West. He will visit Ellensburg which is seeing the completion of a 70,000-acre irrigation project. He will also visit Yakima which has been developed by the use of $10,000,000 of Federal reclamation fund. He will then go to Nyssa, Oregon, to dedicate the Owyhee dam, highest dam in the world, 520 feet high.

Gradually the Great West is coming into her own. For a hundred years there has been continual fight against the abysmal ignorance of the east regarding things western. Wilbur is himself a western man and understands the importance of western development.

When we look up the sayings of some of the supposedly wise men of a hundred years ago, we understand how well those saying fit into some of the editorial comment we read of now in certain eastern publications regarding things western. We believe it is quite appropriate just now to quote what some of those wise ones said of the West.

As the middle west for years was known as "the Great American Desert," so was the Pacific Northwest known from 1800 to 1850 as an uninhabitable wilderness. Follwing are some of theides of the country as expressed by the wise men of their day.

 The National Intelligencer in the early forties published these words.

"Of all the countries upon the face of the earth Oregon is the least favored by heaven. It is almost as barren as Sahara and quite as unhealthy as the Campagna of Italy."

And Senator Dayton of New Jersey said:

"God forbid that the time should ever come when a state on the shores of the Pacific, with its interests and tendencies of trade all looking toward the Asiatic nations of the east shall add its jarring claims to our already distracted and overburdened confederacy.

Evidently the continental idea had not yet taken hold even in the senate of the United States.

Daniel Webster said:

"What do we want with this vast tractless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands, and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or these great mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock bound, cheerless and uninviting, and not a harbor in it? What use have we for such a country? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer Boston than it is now!"

Senator Benton in 1825 said:

"The ridge of the Rocky mountains may be named as a convenient, natural and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western limit of the Republic should be drawn, and the statute of the fabled go Terminus should be erected on the highest peak, never to be thrown down."

The Hudson Bay representative described the country as "miasmic wilderness, uninhabitable except by savage beasts and still more savage men."

Major Joshua Pitcher, early in 1800 wrote of the northwest country:

"The form or configuration of the country is the most perfect and admirable which the imagination can conceive. All its outlines are distinctly marked; all its inteior is connected together. Frozen regions on the north, the ocean and its moutainous coast to the west, the Rocky mountains to the east, sandy and desert plains to the south--such are its boundaries. Within the whole country is watered by streams of a single river, iss[u]ing from the north, east and south, uniting in a region of tide water, and communicating with the area by a single outlet. Such a country is formed for defense and whatever power gets possession of it will probably be able to keep it.

Thus was described the Columbia river and the country which it drains at a time when no one knew anything about it and although it had been discovered at its mouth a decade before, and named by Captain Gray, the name was not in general use.

Here is what Mr. McDuffie said in the United States senate:

"What is the character of this country? Why, as I understand it, that seven hundred miles this side of the Rocky mountains is uninhabitable, where rain scarcely ever falls--a barren sandy soil--mountains totally impassable except in certain parts, where there were gaps or depressions, to be reached only by going some hundreds of miles out of the direct course. Well, what are we going to do in a case like this? How are we going to apply steam? Have you made anything like an estimate of the cost of building a railroad from here to the mouth of the Columbia? Why, the wealth of the Indies would be insufficient. You would have to tunnel through mountains five or six hundred miles in extent. Of what use would this be for agricultural purposes? I would not, for that purpose give a pinch of snuff for the whole territory. I wish it was an impassable barrier to secure usfrom the intrusion of others. If there was an embankment of only five feet to be removed, I would not consent ot expend five dollars to remove that embankment to enable our population to go there. I thank god for His mercy in placing the Rocky mountains there."

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Triumphant promotional articles remained prominent throughout the 1930s in the pages of the Wenatchee Daily World, demonstrating Woods' support of the Coulee Dam project. The following poem is testament to the dream of the Columbia Basin Project's "Planned Promised Land."

TRAVAIL OF THE COULEE DAM And the Columbia Basin Project
July 7, 1932

 Here on the Big Bend prairie
Where the sun-kissed sands are hot,
We played the game for happy homes.
(The devil raked the pot.)

Though farmers tilled their little farms
In every way they knew
Catastrophe and weeds and debts
Just grew, and grew, and grew.

The thistles grew like big balloons,
The mustard grew like trees.
And all the soil the plow turned loose
Went broadside with the breeze.

And when the drouth would take his
crop.
He still lived on in hope.
The bank that held his account
"Threw up the sponge" (went broke).

His grub was gone (all petered out).
His wardrobe that way too.
And where his coat-tail swept his
pants.
His shirt was hanging through.

His faded coat, long out of style.
Became the sleeveless kind.
His pants with holes through both the knees
Had ditto marks behind.

His hat and shoes were much alike
They both were full of holes.
Perhaps his shoes lacked righteousness
(For they had lost their soles).

His shaggy hair poked through his hat
And wafted by the breeze.
They conjured up a picture of
A ship wrecked on the seas.

His hogs all died he knew not why.
His chickens got the croup.
His dear wife sued him for divorce.
His friends all "flew the coop."

His faithful horse "gave up the ghost,"
His cow laid down and died.
Her bones lie bleaching in the sun,
The coyote got her hide.

His life was full of tragedy
But no one is to blame,
His dog got hydrophobia
And the tomcat went insane.

A mortgage took the little farm,
His stable and his shack
And mattress, though it lacked the
straw
That broke the camel's back.

The curtain falls upon the scene,
This tragedy must cease.
"Hope springs eternal in the breast,"
For prosperity and peace.

Here where the sun-kissed desert meets
The pregnant rays of Sol,
A broad two million acres wait
The reclamation call.

Uncle Sam you have the power
To see this thing is done.
It's "feast or famine," take your choice.
"The spigot or the bung."

And when this fertile soil shall drink
Columbia's virtuous stream.
One hundred thousand happy homes
Shall beautify the scene.

God bless the man whose vision gave
The Coulee project birth.
Whose mental prodigy may mean
A paradise on earth.
--E.T. Guffin.
Ephrata, Washington
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 With the completion of Grand Coulee in 1941, Woods' dream was realized. In his book, The 23-Years' Battle for Grand Coulee Dam, Woods chronicles the struggle to attain the dam, declaring:

We had gone out on a thesis that the Columbia River was too big for private development--that it must be developed by government money, either state or national, for it was both too big and too important an asset to be nibbled at by low-head dams (p.2).

In 1942, with his long-fought dream realized, Woods addressed the Grand Coulee High School graduating class of 1942, declaring the structure a monument:

. . . to the idea and the power of an idea; a monument to organization; a monument to cooperation; a monument to opposition; a monument to the United States Army Engineers; a monument to the United States Bureau of Reclamation; a monument to the magic spirit of willing men which accomplishes more than the might of money or the marvels of machinery; a monument to the brains, the intellect of great engineers--and you, class of 1942, could you come back here a thousand years hence, or could your spirit hover around this place ten thousand years hence, you would hear the sojourners talking as they behold this "slab of concrete," and you would hear them say, "Here in 1942, indeed there once lived a great people.

Rufus Woods to the graduating class of 1942,
Grand Coulee High School

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