Since 2003, StoryCorps has been collecting the oral histories of people around the country. One of the two StoryCorps mobile recording booths is in Wenatchee for the month of June, and Northwest Public Radio will be airing some of these stories Wednesday mornings over the next several weeks – we start with our first one today.

Wenatchee bills itself as the Apple Capital of the world, and indeed North Central Washington is one of the largest and most productive tree fruit areas in the world. But without irrigation, this region is essentially a desert. The irrigation which makes agriculture possible, is the result of Grand Coulee Dam. The retired publisher of the Wenatchee World newspaper, Wilfred Woods, told his friend Harriet Bullitt about the role played in the creation of the dam by his father and the founder of the paper, Rufus Woods Sr.

Harriet Bullitt: “Your father was tremendously influential in the economy and the political world in Eastern Washington. As a high school kid, what was it like growing up with such a powerful father?”

Wilfred Woods: “Dad was a traveling man. He went all over the world, but he was convinced that development of Central Washington was important. Back in 1918 he went to Ephrata looking for a story and found a story from an attorney by the name of Billy Clapp, who said: “We ought to put a dam on the Columbia River at Grand Coulee to irrigate the Columbia Basin.” The Columbia Basin was drying up. People were leaving because it had been wetter about the turn of the century. But everybody recognized that they couldn’t raise crops without water.”

Harriet Bullitt: “It was getting drier?”

Wilfred Woods: “It was getting drier, that’s right. So when Dad wrote that article in 1918, he was laughed at [for this] crazy idea. The Superior Court judge up in Waterville, Judge Steiner, said “Rufus, Baron Munchausen is a piker compared to you.”

Sound:[Harriet and Wilfred laugh]

Wilfred Woods: “But the idea of irrigating - the Columbia Basin Project – began to grow, and back in the mid 30s, finally the Corps of Engineers was ordered to study the river and validated the idea of a dam at Grand Coulee. And believe it or not, the Hoover Administration got interested in this project. And the Bureau of Reclamation under Herbert Hoover actually engineered the dam and the Columbia Basin Project. So it was ready when the Depression came. Hoover, of course, was not about to start a big irrigation project, but Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the need for putting men to work. So he started Grand Coulee Dam as a make-work project in 1933 and allocated 63 million dollars of public works funds without Congressional authorization, to start a low dam at Grand Coulee.”

Wilfred Woods retired as publisher of the Wenatchee World in 1997. His son, Rufus Woods Jr., is the paper’s current publisher. Harriet Bullitt is owner and founder of Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth and Icicle Broadcasting. Ten years ago she created the Icicle Fund to support the arts and environmental protection in the upper Wenatchee Valley.

Listen for more StoryCorps installments from North Central Washington Wednesdays during Morning Edition on Northwest Public Radio, or hear them online at NWPR.ORG

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