ABSTRACT
In eastern Washington state lies the mid-Columbia valley, a semi-desert region of bare and barren brown and yellow hills and plains of sagebrush interspersed with verdant, irrigated valleys of orchards, vineyards, cattle pastures and rolling wheatlands. In the midst of this area, where the Columbia is joined first by the Yakima and a few miles further downstream by the Snake River, lie the cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco which together make up the Tri-Cities with a population of more than 200,000. But back in 1942 there were only tiny settlements here based mainly on ranching and irrigated croplands in the wind blown sagebrush desert. The Lewis and Clark expedition had passed through here in 1805 (DeVoto, 1953) and pioneers had gradually settled in areas occupied by Indian tribes who lived off fishing and gathering. This was the American West, a region where environmental hazards and economic risk made life unpredictable for the early pioneers (Raban, 1997). The railway which reached Pasco in 1884 had opened up the area which during the subsequent half century experienced the booms and
depressions inherent in its dependence on agricultural markets elsewhere. Despite the precariousness of life in the Columbia Basin those who made it their home ‘felt a bond to their windy expanses, and their roots grew as deep and tenacious as those of the sagebrush’ (Gerber, 1992, p.22). By the time of the Second World War this sense of identity with the rhythms of rural life was about to be uprooted and the economy of the mid-Columbia region was soon to be utterly transformed.
