ystems like Seattle City Light continue to supply millions of homes with electricity. Many towns today hang highway signs telling travelers that they are “Another Public Power Community,” and the region as a whole boasts more publicly owned utilities than any other in the nation. The area has also enjoyed over the past 75 years some of the cheapest power rates in the country, just as Roosevelt had all but promised it would when promoting the dam projects.
That’s just as Woody would have wanted it. As he put it in one of his tunes, “’Lectric lights is mighty fine,/If you’re hooked on to the power line.”
Daniel Person is News Editor for Seattle Weekly. He can be reached at email@example.com or 206-467-4381. Follow him on Twitter at @danoperson.
This story was adapted from 26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest, by Greg Vandy and Daniel Person, available for pre-order now: