On August 21 the Army Chief of Engineers approved moving the damsite to Bradford Island (Bonneville) from Warrendale due to an unsuitable foundation. PWA Project No. 28 at Bonneville was alloted $250,000 September 23 for surveys, and $20 million September 29 for construction. Site work started November 6. Further core drilling prompted moving the spillway 3,000 feet downstream to its present location.

The Federal Government had taken over the Grand Coulee project from Washington State on November 1. U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes signed an Order of Taking on December 19 to expedite land acquisition. Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier (MWAK) was awarded the dam construction contract July 13, 1934 on its bid of $29.3 million, but the Government reserved the option to change to a higher dam.

Accompanied by Secretary Ickes, President Roosevelt delivered major speeches to large crowds at Bonneville and Grand Coulee August 3 and 4, 1934. He envisioned Bonneville as the first step toward enabling barges to navigate north into Washington and into Idaho's wheat country:

Looking downstream across the Bonneville Dam construction site, this picture shows the foundations for half of the spillway in place.

"That is a dream my friends, but not an idle dream, and today we have evidence of what man can do to improve the conditions of mankind."

He then turned to power:

"There is another reason for the expenditure of money in very large amounts on the Columbia - in fact there are a good many reasons. While we are improving navigation we are creating power, more power, and I always believe in the old saying of more power to you. I don't believe that you can have enough power for a long time to come and the power we will develop here is going to be power which for all time is going to be controlled by the government.

"Two years ago, When I was in Portland, I laid down the principle of the need of government yardsticks so that the people of this country will know whether they are paying the proper price for electricity of all kinds. The Government can create yardsticks."

The problem of shifting from a low dam at Grand Coulee to a high dam remained. Secretary Ickes became a believer in the high dam as a result of his August 4, 1934 site visit. Bureau of Reclamation studies and many Pacific Northwest leaders strongly supported the high dam.

The dilemma worsened April 29, 1935. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled certain dams, including Bonneville and Grand Coulee, had not been properly authorized by Congress. Congress remedied the defect by authorizing the projects, but Grand Coulee almost fell by the wayside on the argument it was an irrigation project. Representative Knute Hill explained Grand Coulee mainly was a power project whose irrigation features wouldn't be added until 15 to 25 years in the future. His argument won on a roll call of 201 to 126.

The President signed the River and Harbor Act on August 30, legitimizing Bonneville, Grand Coulee, and other dams. On June 5, Secretary Ickes had issued Order for Changes Number One approving the high Grand Coulee Dam. In passing the authorizing law, Congress approved Grand Coulee as a high dam and multiple-purpose project. Concrete pouring began December 6, 1935.

On February 7, 1938 the MWAK group and Henry J. Kaiser won the $34.4 million contract to complete the dam. The concrete pour was completed October 15, 1941. By then Bonneville Dam had been producing power for 3 years.

Advance planning for the two dams paid off for the Pacific Northwest. Throughout the depression, and especially in 1933, funds for emergency public works went to proposed projects with plans ready so men could go to work

obliterated roads. Children died of dust pneumonia. Enormous clouds of dust moved eastward like a shroud across the eastern states and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Dust Bowl refugees abandoned their farms and moved west. Population declined in five Dust Bowl states from 1930 to 1940. The California population increased 1.2 million, Washington 172,795, and Oregon 135,898. This drove up the number of unemployed.

Former U.S. Senator Richard L. Neuberger reports in his book The Promised Land that many refugees carried newspaper clippings about the speech President Roosevelt made at Bonneville Dam on August 3, 1934, in which he envisioned:

"In this northwestern section of our land, we still have the opening of opportunity for a vastly increased population. There are many sections of the country, as you know, where conditions are crowded. There are many sections of the country where land has run out or has been put to the wrong kind of use. America is growing. There are many people who want to go to a section of the country where they will have a better chance for themselves and their children...

"Out here you have not just space, you have space that can be used by human beings - a wonderful land - a land of opportunity."

When he dedicated Bonneville Dam 3 years later Roosevelt spoke pointedly of the mistakes that caused the enormous dust storms in the 10 semiarid states. Thousands of farm families were left destitute. Federal relief costs exceeded two billion dollars.

Emigration from many states to the Pacific Northwest continued. The combined population of Oregon and Washington increased by more than a million from 1940 to 1950. Most of the later arrivals came intent on obtaining wartime employment, and remained.

In the depression years few scenes had the visual impact and sense of excitement of the Grand Coulee Dam construction site at night. Approaching it in the black of night was like coming into daylight. The powerful lights allowed concrete pouring to continue throughout the night. It continued for 6 long years through heat and cold, snow, wind, dust, and grit.

Construction towns never seemed to rest. Juke boxes blared the beat for dancers and people on the move. Peak employment reached 7,455 in June 1937. The hustle and bustle of construction contrasted sharply to depression scenes of soup lines and the unemployed.

6. PLANNING PAID DIVIDENDS

Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir men's blood, and probably themselves will not be realized.

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing asserting itself with ever growing insistency.

- Daniel Hudson Burnham

While construction progressed day and night on Grand Coulee and Bonneville, the Administration and Congress had to face the question of how to handle the resulting 21⁄2 million kilowatts of electric power production. Bonneville Dam would produce power from its first generator in 1938, and Coulee 3 years later. Who would use the power? Where would it go? How would it get there? Who would build and operate the transmission lines? In fact, would the power be used at all? Political opponents asked that question as did many other persons, especially magazine writers.

The September 21, 1935, issue of Collier's contained an article, "Power in the Wilderness," in which writer Walter Davenport stated that power would go begging. He pictured the 18 Grand Coulee Dam generators "singing their Lorelei song to cynical industry." The generators "will be wasting their music on the desert air." And, he raised one particularly pertinent point: "We're building huge power factories but not transmission lines."

In The Saturday Evening Post of July 13, 1935, Robert Ormond Case wrote of Grand Coulee Dam as "The Eighth World Wonder." He conjectured that the dam would become as equally a useless monument as the Egyptian pyramids, which it surpassed in size.

In the June 19, 1937 Collier's, Jim Marshall wrote of Bonneville Dam as a "Dam of Doubt," referring approvingly to Davenport's article on Grand Coulee. Both articles alleged cost overruns. Both noted the area's sparse population, such as six-tenths of a person per square mile in Oregon's Harney County. Marshall perceived many problems at Bonneville Dam:

Would the salmon fail to traverse the Bonneville Dam fish ladders, a failure that would put thousands of people out of work? Would ships ever use the Bonneville locks? Would industries move into the area? If they did, would residential customer's power payments subsidize industry?

Nationally the Bonneville and Grand Coulee projects did not enjoy a good press in the 1935-1937 period.

In contrast, the June 5, 1943, issue of The Saturday