Irrigation project gains traction

In 1922, the Columbia Basin Irrigation League was formed. Just a year later, Congress passed a bill allowing an investigation of the irrigation project with appropriations of $100,000.

This was the very beginning of the process that led to construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest dam in the world at the time, to help provide irrigation to the Columbia Basin, and power to the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It was also the beginning of one of the largest irrigation efforts in the nation, the Columbia Basin Project.

The original project called for an area of canals to irrigate the full 1....