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The Columbia Basin Project My husband dryland farmed . . . and that wasn't very satisfactory . . . when the wind blew, it cut the plants off. It wasn't productive really. . . . We worked quite hard in 1951 to be ready for water . . . . So by 1952, then, we were able to get our first real crop in. And we had potatoes and we had wheat. . . . And we had power, we had electricity. Barbara Osborne. Main canal of the Columbia Basin Project under construction, 1946-1950. Photo courtesy of Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce In 1952 the waters impounded by Grand Coulee Dam reached the first farms in central Washington through the Columbia Basin Project, a system of pumps, canals, dams, reservoirs, laterals, wasteways, and ditches. Irrigation fever swept the Basin in the 1950s, drawing a variety of people to Moses Lake to work on the project and to farm. The Columbia Basin Project, built between 1946 and 1966, was more complicated and costly than Grand Coulee Dam.   forward Table of Contents <> Photo Archive Oral History Archive <> Documents Archive <> Bibliography To Top of Moses Lake Exhibit