Grand Coulee Dam of Reclamation was founded, it investigated a scheme for pumping water from the Columbia River to irrigate parts of central Washington. An attempt to raise funds for irrigation failed in 1914, as Washington voters rejected a bond measure. In 1917, William M. Clapp, a lawyer from Ephrata, Washington, proposed the Columbia be dammed immediately below the Grand Coulee. He suggested a concrete dam could flood the plateau, just as nature blocked it with ice centuries ago. Clapp was joined by James O'Sullivan, another lawyer, and by Rufus Woods, publisher of "The Wenatchee World" newspaper in the nearby agricultural centre of
Grand Coulee of Lower Grand Coulee. The Great Cataract forms the divide from the upper to lower coulees. The Lower Coulee tends along the monoclinal flexure to Soap Lake where the canyons end and the water flowed out into Quincy Basin. Quincy Basin is filled with the eroded gravels and silts from the Coulee. The Lower Coulee, also created its own path across the plains. Evidence of this is found in the tilted flows visible at Hogback islands in Lake Lenore and tilted flows along Washington 17 from Dry Falls to Park Lake. Numerous canyons acted as a distribution system for the