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The Columbia Basin Project and the Growth of Moses Lake [The dam] . . . invited all the associated businesses for farmers, your implement stores. . . . Penney's Store came in. . . the jeweler store came in. A hardware store, a paint store. . . at one time they said that each farmer generated seven different jobs. And a lot of the construction people stayed. . . . I don't imagine Moses Lake would have grown too much without it. Barbara Osborne. By the 1970s, public opposition to large federal subsidies for the project and waning farmer enthusiasm for the expensive investments required ended its expansion. Optimists had hoped that the Columbia Basin Project would support one hundred thousand farm families, but twenty years after its much celebrated initiation just a few thousand farmers and corporations worked the irrigated land. Despite its shortcomings, the CBP made agriculture the region's economic mainstay, and many living in and around Moses Lake would agree with longtime resident Gladys Richards Hull's assessment of it as "our lifeblood." Fudge Tokunaga in sugar beet field, c. 1955. Photo courtesy of Fudge Tokunaga   forward Table of Contents <> Photo Archive Oral History Archive <> Documents Archive <> Bibliography To Top of Moses Lake Exhibit