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POWER and the PACIFIC NORTHWEST
a history
of the
Bonneville
Power
Administration
U.S. Department of the Interior
1937 1976
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POWER AND THE
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
A history of the
Bonneville Power Administration
by
Vera Springer
Editors
Paul Alelyunas and Dan Schausten
Special Contributors
Bernard Goldhammer, Myron Katz,
Harold Kropitzer, Gus...
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This history, published in celebration of America's Bicentennial, is dedicated to the men and women of the Bonneville Power Administration whose efforts over the past forty years have realized the dreams of its architects.
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CONTENTS
Prologue 1
1 Evolution of the Nation's
Electric Power Systems 3
3 2 Bonneville and Grand Coulee-Keystone of Northwest Hydropower 11
Bonneville Project Act-A "Provisional" Bureau is Born 29
4 The Forties • Years of...
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Roll on, Columbia
Woody Guthrie
(Yes) Roll on, Columbia, roll on, Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
Your power is turning the darkness to dawn
Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
Green Douglas fir where the waters cut through, Down her steep...
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As the Nation's principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural resources. This includes fostering the wisest use of our land and water resources,...
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ProIogue
The Pacific Northwest, at the
coming of early explorers, was
a vast wilderness through which the Columbia River surged unfettered to the sea. The basin of the Columbia covers 258,000 square miles, a territory which now includes the...
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for half a century after Lewis and Clark visited its mountains and valleys, disturbed only by the trapper and hunter. But the great westward migration in the mid-1800's brought the farmer to plow the unfurrowed earth and the miner to excavate...
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1 Evolution of the Nation's
Electric Power Systems
Man's earliest experience with electricity was as lightning flashing across the night skies, which first aroused his fear—and then his curiosity. Ancient texts discuss this mysterious... |
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resource development in this country took place soon after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony placed water wheels in streams to power grist mills and textile factories. These factories were so efficient that by...
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plants were small and served a limited locality. (The tremendous hydro potential of the Columbia River was not tapped until 1932 when Puget Sound Power & Light Company completed its dam at Rock Island below Wenatchee, Washington, —although a...
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had sold power to the municipality.
Consolidation beyond municipal boundaries depended on development of long-distance transmission facilities to feed local distribution grids. Such transmission grids were developed, and one Southwestern...
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handled twice at each of these places."
The Corps recommended improvements whereby "not merely navigation per se would benefit, but competitive navigation as well."
As a result of this report, endorsed by well-organized farm and community...
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of all the Federal generation/transmission programs and eventually included both hydroelectric and thermal plants. The Bonneville Power Administration owes much to the precedent set by Federal development of a transmission network for Muscle...
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2 Bonneville and Grand Coulee.
Keystone of Northwest Hydropower
With the beginning of the Great
Ice Age, about one million
years ago, huge glaciers—massive sheets of moving ice—spread south out of Canada across much of central and...
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miles wide, with a drop of over 400 feet. By way of comparison, Niagara Falls, one mile wide and with a drop of only 165 feet, would have been dwarfed by Dry Falls. The power at this point of the Ice Age diverted Columbia River was at least that...
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dam scoffed at the plan. A midwestern paper said, "The Grand Coulee Dam will be no more self-liquidating than the Great Pyramid it so humbles in size." And, an Eastern Congressman declared, "Grand Coulee is a vast area of gloomy tablelands...
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Image captions: A harsh life—dirt farming before dams brought irrigation.
Franklin D. Roosevelt public power speech, Portland, Oregon, 1932.
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tion with the most efficient development of the potential water power, the control of floods, and the needs of irrigation." In the Pacific Northwest, the "308 Report" on the Columbia River recommended a 10-dam comprehensive plan for the river's...
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