Essay: Columbia Communities Themes | Center for Columbia River History

The Columbia Communities Web exhibition explores how dam construction shaped the mid-to-late twentieth century histories of eight selected communities. Each of the communities profiled-Camas, Crewport, Indian fishers, the Columbia Slough, Cottage Grove, Moses Lake, Sandpoint, and Umatilla-has its own unique history, characterized by different demographics, commercial and industrial activities, and social concerns. Yet the region’s communities have much in common. Foremost, they share a physical, economic, or cultural connection to the Columbia River. They have also endured rapid urbanization and rural decline, adapted to changing cultures, generated and lost economic opportunities, and sought solutions to pollution and declining fish runs. Moreover, the materials gathered for this Web exhibition reveal that people share an appreciation of community, however they may define it, through work, family, culture, persistence, or place.

The communities featured can hardly represent the great diversity found in the 259,000-square-mile Columbia Basin region. Although people may find themselves sharing the same town, neighborhood, or cultural group, the multiple perspectives presented suggest the differing ways that residents have viewed the past based on their dissimilar experiences and perspectives. Indian tribal leaders, students, loggers, mill workers and operators, local historians, farm workers, farmers, urban planners, business people, community activists, and others reveal how they have shaped their communities and adapted to economic, environmental, and cultural change over the past seven decades.

Legacy of Dam-Building

People of the Columbia River Basin face the legacy of dam building with predictably mixed feelings. On the one hand, the agricultural and industrial expansion facilitated by the dams allowed many residents and newcomers to embrace economic opportunities. On the other hand, dams displaced some Native and non-Native people and communities; inundated burial grounds, agricultural areas, and habitats; and diminished or ended salmon runs. The history of dam construction can either evoke positive or painful memories. It is this mixed legacy that continues to fuel debates about the future of Columbia and Snake River dams and fish recovery.

Since the late nineteenth century white settlers in the Basin sought to control the Columbia and its tributaries for irrigation, flooding, and navigation, but it was not until the 1930s depression that federal government planners considered multiple dams. Bonneville Dam, completed in 1938, and Grand Coulee Dam, completed in 1941, anchored a managed river system, proposed and implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers over the next four decades. The dams provided thousands of jobs for depression-era workers and generated massive amounts of power that during World War II spawned the Hanford nuclear reserve and new industries in the Northwest.

Grand Coulee symbolizes the legacy of birth and destruction that the dam system initiated. It spawned the Columbia Basin Project, which irrigated a half-million dry acres in central Washington, and the growth of Moses Lake. Gladys Richards Hull described the dam as the town’s lifeblood, which brought new farmers, processing plants, businesses, and jobs. But the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt displaced many members of the Confederated tribes of the Colville Reservation. The dam also prevented fish passage above it, wiping out salmon runs Native Americans had relied on for thousands of years.

Many advocated dams for flood control; others believed their construction would flood valued lands and communities. Many in Cottage Grove came to view the annual floods that had made the Willamette River valley so fertile as a menace. By 1969, the Corps of Engineers had completed six dams to control Willamette flooding through reservoirs. Virginia Overland noted that Albeni Falls dam near Sandpoint flooded out nearly 6,300 acres of the most prized homesteads. Original settlers couldn’t believe that the government could do this to them, but they did. They took their land, and they weren’t paid well either. The federal government completed McNary Dam in 1953 and John Day Dam in 1968 to assist navigation, irrigation, and hydropower production, but the dams inundated twelve towns, many Native burial sites and petroglyphs, and fish habitats. One Umatilla resident remarked, losing the River was probably the most traumatic thing.

The dams created environmental as well as economic and cultural changes. Margaret D’Estrella of Umatilla recalled the wild current of the Columbia before the dams made the river just lakes, you’re just going from one lake to another. It’s not the same at all. Alva Stephens of Umatilla believed that irrigation projects “not only changed the landscape, they’ve changed the climate, ending former frequent summer windstorms since irrigation cooled the ,hot sun on the desert.

Columbia Basin Indians relied on the Celilo Falls fishery for food, business, and religious and cultural practices, and the 1957 Dalles Dam inundation of it symbolized a great loss. After nearly four decades, poet Elizabeth Woody has written, Celilo Falls is still talked about and remembered as the heart of our homeland. It was like a mother, nourishing us, and it is remembered as a place of great peace. In the twentieth century, tourists and customers marveled at the accomplished fishers who, sharing almost 500 fishing stations around the roaring falls, gripped dipnets and wooden scaffolds to pull in salmon weighing up to sixty pounds. Although tribal councils protested the proposed dam in formal resolutions and in testimony before Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers reached a settlement with Indian representatives to construct the dam. Celilo fisher Watson Totus lamented that no compensation could be made which would benefit my future generations, the people still to come.

Federal Stimulus, Work, and Newcomers

The region often expressed resentment towards federal intervention, but it depended on government dollars and activities. Dam, irrigation, military, and fishery projects; agricultural, timber, and power subsidies; conservation measures; highway construction; and recreational development all played a hand in shaping Columbia Basin communities.

Depression-era projects stimulated federal activity in the Pacific Northwest, but World War II spending transformed the region with new military and industrial activities. The U.S. Navy established Camp Farragut at Sandpoint, and the U.S. Army built the Portland Assembly Center to house Japanese American internees and the Ordnance Depot in Umatilla. People from across the nation flocked to the region to take wartime jobs, especially in secret atomic weapons production at Hanford and at the Vancouver-Portland shipyards.

Labor demands brought new people to the area and provided opportunities for previously excluded women and minorities. Farmers recruited white southerners, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans to tend and harvest labor-intensive irrigated crops. Mormons came to Moses Lake to take advantage of irrigated lands and new industries. Some Japanese American families, removed from the West Coast during the war by Executive Order 9066, escaped internment by moving near Moses Lake, located east of the Columbia River internment boundary. African Americans came to Vanport to work during the war, despite resistance from white crafts unions, and stayed.

Women found opportunities in male-dominated industries previously off-limits to them. Although women had worked at the Camas paper bag and napkin factory since 1906, it was not until World War II that they filled men’s more skilled and better-paid positions at Crown Zellerbach. The company provided day care for the female employees’ children. By 1943, women made up 30 percent of the mill’s workforce. Former employee Kathy Sinclair recalled that the mill provided good opportunities, they were paying better than the waitresses were getting and that’s what we were after. Cottage Grove women also obtained jobs in local lumber mills during the war.

Work connected the lives of Basin residents for it brought many here and sustained their presence. Alternately, the contributions of the region’s workers generated Columbia Basin wealth, although their labors were often forgotten. Crewport [workers] allowed these farms to grow around here, insisted Mickey Leonardo. Julia Saenz of Crewport agreed that there was no work I haven’t done, cutting, picking, sorting, sacking, and pruning the harvests of productive watered lands.

Family Ties and the Significance of Place

Able to survive and sometimes thrive in the Basin, workers’ families joined them, put down roots, and began to shape their communities. Family ties often kept residents in place even when economic opportunities were few. Mexican Americans emphasized the importance of kinship networks and how many followed relatives who had established footholds in the Yakima Valley, Moses Lake, Umatilla, and other Columbia Basin agricultural centers. They often worked as family units, performing all kinds of labor as they followed harvests throughout the Northwest, until they could secure permanent jobs and homes.

The region itself often drew people to or rooted them in these communities. While it is often difficult to sort out the meaning of place, which is just as likely to mean family, work, and community ties as an attachment to the land, these places did hold special meaning to many people. Indian people often connected these relationships. Jeff Van Pelt of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation noted that the Umatilla Basin is a very sacred place. His people lived here, they died here, they got married here, they had ceremonies here, my mother can sit back and tell me where my family tree goes back ten generations of people being here and what their lives were at that time.

Other residents felt pulled by the rich abundance that the Columbia, its tributaries, and nearby lands provided. Many in the Columbia Slough neighborhoods of St. Johns and Kenton delighted in harvesting plentiful catfish, crawfish, crappies, bass, and ducks. Pete Dodd, who as a youngster left the dry Oklahoma plains for the Yakima Valley, cherished the verdant farms near Crewport where we always had fruit, and that was the great thing for us. We’d never seen fruit before.

Sometimes people moved to the Columbia Basin for its scenic beauty and wilderness and recreational opportunities. The place drew back-to-the land pilgrims in Sandpoint, sports fishers and sailboarders in the Columbia Gorge, and others who fled urban tensions for the solitude of small town life. Claire Dross described why she chose to retire in Cottage Grove: This is much more wooded-trees, firs and cedars. More rivers and streams and much less congested as far as population and traffic.

Community Activism

Although residents may have divided over a host of issues, they often pooled their resources and energies to improve their communities. Women in particular played a central role in community building in the Columbia Basin. From 1916-20, Progressive Umatilla Mayor Laura Starcher and her Petticoat Council won local support for their efforts to establish a library, speed limits and sewers. Hoping to improve their community’s water system, women in Neppel (predecessor to Moses Lake) gathered signatures and convinced the county commission to incorporate the town so that they could issue bonds to get a decent well. In 1943 Sandpoint residents feared that Albeni Falls dam plans would destroy nearby fertile lands, and Helen Hawkins and local women’s clubs organized opposition and urged Congress to defeat the plans. When their community began to bustle with the construction of McNary Dam, Umatilla women formed hospital auxiliaries, garden clubs, and Camp Fire Girls to bring transient dam-building families together with long-term residents.

Labor unions also sought to improve community life by improving wages and working conditions. Paper mill workers in Camas struggled to establish a union as early as 1917. They finally succeeded in establishing unions in the 1930s but met a major challenge in 1964 when westerners pulled away from East Coast AFL domination to form the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW). The new rebel local met resistance in Camas, and its strike that year divided both workers and community. Former union officer Dick Lindstrom recalled that the strike left a lot of scars that would take a long time to heal, but families, friends, and local businesses soon came to support the union.

Urban development pressures and concerns for the environment spawned numerous citizen groups. When in the 1980s a developer purchased and began logging the Black Forest along Lacamas Lake in Camas for home sites, some residents created Citizens to Save Lacamas Lake to preserve remaining city open spaces. Although they did not halt the Lacamas Shores development, the Clark County Citizens in Action and United Camas Association of Neighborhoods formed to lobby the city to purchase acreage, protect the lake, and plan for future growth. Environmental, business, and neighborhood interests in Portland created the Columbia Slough Watershed Council to solve water pollution problems.

Traumatic events, such as the inundation of Celilo Falls or the shootings at Frontier Jr. High School in Moses Lake, also brought community members together. These events represented markers in the community’s collective memory, and galvanized many to work for change to prevent future tragedies.

Communities often mobilized to create new images. Stung by association with the White Supremacist group Aryan Nations located near its borders, Sandpoint residents deliberately posed a counter image that championed human rights by organizing anti-racism demonstrations, public forums and the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force. Task Force secretary Brenda Hammond hoped that these efforts would get the town “on the map” for “standing up against racism.”

Economic and Environmental Change and the Urban-Rural Divide

The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed dramatic economic changes in the Columbia Basin as former well-paying jobs in the timber, aluminum, and other industries disappeared and were replaced by lower-wage service jobs. Rural communities in particular did not fare well. Communities in the shadow of cities had better luck attracting the booming high tech industry and urban commuters, but skyrocketing housing prices squeezed low-income families who failed to prosper from the boom.

Community businesses struggled to compete in a world dominated by large corporations such as Wal-Mart and Safeway. Surviving businesses adapted to multiple challenges, including transportation patterns. For example, several Cottage Grove establishments moved from downtown to the I-5 exit, hoping to survive with increased traffic but weakening the town center. The family farm became a relic of the past. Sam Nobles commented that when at one time Umatilla County had probably 25 dairies, -today, there’s not one dairy- still active.

Where communities once ignored environmental degradation in order to promote jobs, environmental activism and stricter state and federal standards pressured many of the Columbia’s industries to become cleaner. In 1926 when Crown Willamette Paper Company opened its Kraft process at its Camas mill, most residents echoed the Camas Post’s proclamation that it would prefer plenty of jobs and plenty of odor to a situation of no odor and no jobs. But by the 1980s Environmental Protection Act rules required the Camas mill to reduce its air and water emissions, including the dioxins and other chemicals that damaged river ecology. Indian tribes, fishers, and environmentalists pressured political bodies and brought lawsuits to clean waterways, restore salmon runs, and protect habitats. Tribes persisted in these battles because they recognized that salmon were more important than just food. Yakama Indian Nation member Chris Walsh contended, There’s a huge connection between salmon and tribal health. Restoring salmon restores a way of life.

The period witnessed increasing tensions between urban and rural communities over economic development, political culture, and environmental controls. City dwellers sometimes resented what they viewed as rural resistance to cleaning up the Columbia River and saving endangered species; rural communities pointed to the hypocrisy of urban support for environmental regulations while ignoring the impact of urban pollutants in the river. But urban residents were hardly unified in their attitudes. The Columbia Slough in north Portland has been alternately viewed as a site for flushing city sewage and toxins, commerce, industry, recreation, and working-class and ethnic communities. Tensions rose between those who valued the waterway as a natural resource for recreation and wildlife habitat and those who recognized its economic development potential.

Persistence

The communities featured in the Web site reveal how people persist in maintaining community despite divisions and economic hard times. Closures of military installations, lumber mills, and food processing plants hurt Basin economies. A few communities in this study, where primary industries declined or disappeared, bounced back through tourism. When Albeni Falls dam damaged fish populations in Lake Pend d’Oreille and hurt tourism in Sandpoint, locals developed another tourist industry, skiing, to entice visitors to the town’s beautiful surroundings. Over the next few decades, Sandpoint became a popular destination for its arts and recreational attractions.

The desire to remain in the community often required careful planning and hard work as well as persistence. Federico Ramos of Umatilla noted that he and his family saved money through the year in order to survive winter months when there is little farm work. A shared sense of community helped Crewport residents endure hard times, and after the labor camp’s official closure in 1968, many purchased the small homes and perpetuated the life of the community. Other former residents remained lifelong friends and celebrated reunions after moving to nearby Granger and other Yakima Valley towns.

Many determined to stay in their communities despite prejudice from their neighbors. After experiencing the humiliation and hardships of internment during World War II, the Okazaki family returned to their Kenton neighborhood near the Columbia Slough. They reopened their store and persisted, despite resentful neighbors who initially refused to patronize it. The 1948 flood that wiped out Vanport adversely affected African American residents who found housing options in segregated Portland severely limited. Ed Washington’s family lost everything, everything we had, and then that meant you had to rebuild from zero. Nonetheless, his and many families determined to stay and developed a new community in the Albina neighborhood of north Portland.

The very character of a community often changed as it persisted. As timber and agricultural industries declined, some small communities could lure high-tech companies and urban commuters. In the 1980s timber production declines led to a 68 percent drop in jobs in Cottage Grove, leading some residents to commute to Eugene-Springfield for employment. As its industrial base declined, however, its small town atmosphere attracted new residents and retirees from Eugene-Springfield and California.

Dams constructed on the Columbia and its tributaries shaped these eight communities. Yet other mid-to-late twentieth century developments affected their histories’ too. Federal expenditures, entrepreneurship, immigrant and migrant labors, family ties, and community activism all contributed to the evolution and persistence of the region’s communities. Many people landed in the Columbia River Basin by birth or by accident; others came for jobs or to join families and ended up settling permanently. Many care strongly and deeply about their communities. They feel a connection to the place-its land, water, climate, history-or to their work, families, or friends living in it. Some found opportunities, some experienced tragedy. Their diverse experiences mirror the diversity of feelings about Columbia River dams. The Columbia River winds its way through the region’s disparate communities and political boundaries and joins them in ways not often perceived or imagined. We invite you to explore the fascinating stories, rich resources, and complex histories presented in the Columbia Communities Web site.