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
Etzikom Coulee of at its origin east of Stirling Lake (to which it is connected by the Sluice Gate Channel) to an elevation of at its mouth at Pakowki Lake, over a length of more than . The coulee builds a canyon up to deep. Etzikom Coulee Etzikom Coulee is a coulee located in Southern Alberta, Canada. The waterway was formed as a glacial spillway channel at the end of the last ice age. The Etzikom Coulee begins northeast of the town of Stirling, and makes its way southeast of the Hamlet of Wrentham, after that it passes by the Hamlet of