The story of Bonneville Power:: 1937-1968-1987... Dams of the Columbia River Basin

Realization of the vast hydro power and flood-control potential of the Columbia River, its tributaries, and watershed basin dates back more than half a century. As early as 1923, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers presented comprehensive testimony to the Congress on the feasibility of such eventual development. And, in 1937, B. E. Torpen, a hydroelectric engineer, presented to the ASCE an outline of the power possibilities of the Columbia River and its tributaries. This paper, entitled ``Where Rolls the Oregon,´´ was an accurately prophetic blueprint for the optimum development of the Columbia River Basin over a 50-year period. In it, he anticipated the need for the Canadian Treaty to provide upstream storage and to interconnect the great hydro energy in the future of British Columbia. His dream and his pedictions are well on their way toward ultimate fulfillment.