GRAND COULEE STILL PIONEER BERG (1934)

          from the Wenatchee World, Feb. 12, 1934:

Grand Coulee Is Still A Pioneer Berg
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Everyone Greets Neighbor With "Hello"
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Sheep Band Disrupts Town's Dignity
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               By HU BLONK
     GRAND COULEE DAM SITE, Feb. 12.--Just when Grand Coulee townsite, the most developed area here to date, was beginning to feel dignified and was adopting an air of a metropolis, along comes someone to take away that pleasant feeling of importance.
     Day by day, the growing town is gaining more and more the aspects of a real honest-to-goodness modern city.  Sidewalks came this week, graveled streets arrived two weeks ago, refrigeration plants have been installed in a few business houses, the water supply system will be here soon, electricity is just around the corner, with it will come radio, phone service is available, mail arrives every day, the weekly newspaper is doing a thriving business and various other things have made Grand Coulee townsite feel that it has a right to be proud.
               Is It Any Wonder
     No wonder that many of the residents were slightly perturbed and the civic dignity disturbed yesterday.  Some neglectful farmer, with malice aforethought, beyond question drove his herd of sheep right through mainstreet.
     Now everyone knowsokane, Seattle, Portland, all cities of unquestionable importance, certainly do not have bawling sheep cluttering down its avenues.  "There ought to be a law" certainly against degrading a city the size of Grand Coulee by running a herd of wooly creatures through its thoroughfares.
        Hard as it has tried, however, to paint the picture truly, Grand Coulee is
   still just a pioneer town.  Roads are still six-inches deep of mud during rainy
   weather, entrance to the townsite is still via a one-way road with rough
   bounces and shakes accompanying every ride to the town.
     Baths are at a premium, rooms too are costly.  Wallpaper is a luxury indeed, a sewage system a thing to dream of.  Main street is still pitch dark at night and the ever-present sagebrush plant still grows along the roadways.
               A Pioneer Spirit
     Everyone knows everyone else, a cheery "hello" accompanies every meeting.  The school is still a one-room building and books are few and far between.  Pressed trousers are a scarcity, the hightop shoes and rolled pantleg being the prevailing mode here.
     One-room cabins, tents and shacks, are "homes" to most of the pioneers here and a half-gallon wash basin is the bathtub.  Water is brought in by the bucket, running water would be "elite" here for sure.
     A post-office is to come here soon but now the newspaper office and its editor is the mailing place and the postmaster.  Housewives don't bemoan a half-inch of wet clay on their floors for rugs are yet in the coming.  Beer parlors with their poker games are still the community gathering places and tenders serve all there is unreservedly over the bars.
        But despite all the inconveniences and all the hardships, Grand Coulee
   is a happy town.  Everybody's optimistic and a pessimist can find a few to
   be pessimistic to.  For all who live here where the "big dam" is going up
   see better days ahead.
     Grand Coulee has more smiles per front foot than any city in the world.  Ask anyone here.

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          from the Seattle Post Intelligenser, 1934 (exact date not showing in clipping):

Newest Town of U. S. Springs Up on Grand Coulee
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New Site Already Boasts Score of Business Houses; Dam Work Progressing
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     Over on the river flats of Grand Coulee, where the sage brush grew undisturbed six months ago as it had grown for thousands of years, are the buildings of the newest town in the United States.
     And where the coyotes wailed at the moon as it rose above the buttes, is now the clamor and bustle of a town, the piping of machine-shop whistles and the grunt of steam shovels.
     For Grand Coulee, the town, has sprung up on the site of the great dam which is to span the Columbia River in the rugged basin cut by the river among the great hills.

SMALL HOMES GOING UP

     Under the shadows of the towering bare walls, baked by the suns of summer to yellow and brown and carved by the freshets of spring into weird sculptures, the townsite now boasts a score or more of business houses.  New small homes are going up every day as workers arrive to join the swarms of men laboring along the river banks.
     Contractors' camps and shops line the shores of the Columbia, and a ferry plies back and forth all day, transporting men and machinery across the swirling waters which soon will be tamed.

SHOVELS GNAWING AT HILLS

     Batteries of power shovels are gnawing away a hill on the west bank, excavating for the dam foundations.  The work goes on all night under huge floodlights which throw long reflections upward toward the lonely hilltops.
     One of the most difficult feats confronting the engineers of the project was in floating ponderous power shovels and other heavy equipment across the river so work could progress on both banks at once.  This was accomplished by the use of barges.