The Wired Northwest: The History of Electric Power, 1870s–1970s by Paul W. Hirt (review)

Early settler economy in the Pacific Northwest thrived on forest products, fisheries, mines, and agriculture. Yet, the region’s water power resources held far greater potential for economic growth when hydroelectricity appeared on the scene in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Electricity from the dynamo offered infinite possibilities, but its accompanying turbines required a source of power. In the Pacific Northwest, according to Hirt, abundant power flowed in “the region’s prodigious and ubiquitous rivers” (132). Hydroelectrical power brought modernity to the Pacific Northwest sending its economy into an upward spiral, especially from World War II onward.

Hirt’s earlier book, The Conspiracy of Optimism (Lincoln, 1994), charted the downward spiral of the Pacific Northwest’s logging and lumbering industry under the improvident policies of the United States Forest Service during the latter part of the twentieth century. The Wired Northwest, however, is decidedly upbeat except in its frank assessment that dams destroyed the salmon runs and that neither hatcheries nor fish ladders can bring back the anadromous fishery to anywhere near its previous scale. The Columbia and Snake Rivers dominate the book’s narrative; its scope extends (with some effort) to the British Columbia side of the Pacific Northwest.

Although hydroelectricity brought technological marvels to the region, political struggles raged concerning public versus private power. The fight began with the early municipally owned power systems of Tacoma and Seattle, continuing through the New Deal into the 1950s (about the one high dam in Hells Canyon on the Snake River) and beyond. The production of millions of kilowatts from the harnessing of the Columbia River—first by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Grand Coulee Dam and later the Army Corps of Engineers’ Bonneville Dam—during the New Deal tipped the scales in favor of public power. Hirt does a yeoman job following the debates through the twentieth century. He notes that since no Pacific Northwest state opted for a state-owned or sponsored power system (like Nebraska’s), the way was open for an eventual partnership between private and public power production and delivery.¹

Hirt’s views are decidedly in favor of public power. He dismisses the validity of private power arguments: “It is hard to see how taxpayers and electric consumers were harmed by public ownership” (289). Both public utilities and regulatory agencies during the Progressive Era (1900 to 1917) made possible what he calls a “democratized electrical service” (267).

In the case of British Columbia, private power prevailed until well after World War II, the Province not experiencing the wartime growth that occurred to its south. BC Electric was “expropriated” by the Provincial Government during the 1960s, but too late for the Province to have the kind of low rates that once provided the American portion of the Pacific Northwest with “an economic stimulus somewhat akin to the Federal Reserve System’s lowering interest rates” (360).

Hirt’s final assessment asserts that neither public nor private power won the long struggle despite charges of “creeping socialism” on the part of private power. What occurred on both sides of the international boundary in the Pacific Northwest was “a curious, hybrid system of publicly owned and privately owned utilities sharing the electricity supply sector, with private utilities embedded in a strongly regulated environment” (99).

This impressive book is a case study in progress (with the exception of salmon runs)—generally a success story about the democratic development of an essential resource upon which modernity rests.