Archives West Finding Aid

Oscar Windom Dam (b. 1883), Everett Stephen Dam (b. 1885) and Milton Emery Dam (b. 1886) were the sons of Alton S. Dam, an early developer of large scale irrigation in the Yakima Valley. After attending the University of Washington, the oldest brother, Oscar, became a Federal Service employee with the United States Customs Service in Seattle, while the two younger brothers formed a Seattle brokerage firm, which they named Dam Brothers. Although these occupations provided their livelihoods, the over-riding concern of all three brothers was the promotion of a large hydroelectric dam at Priest Rapids on the Columbia River.

The Priest Rapids project was first envisioned by Alton S. Dam in about 1910 and his sons were to spend the next twenty years in a vain effort to make it a reality. They were able to interest the General Electric Company and the related Electric Bond and Share Company, as well as such exponents of large scale electrification as Sidney Z. Mitchell. Together with these large eastern interests, they formed a corporation to finance the construction of the dam. This corporation, the Washington Development and Irrigation Company, was headed by General Electric’s Henry H. Pierce, and held the license for the project but received little financial backing from the parent companies. Consequently, the firm of Dam Brothers undertook to arrange financing for the dam. They were met with opposition from the investment community and the regulatory authorities, both insisting that a market for electric power must be a part of the overall development. Thus, the Dam brothers found themselves promoting nitrate, fertilizer, and aluminum plants at Priest Rapids, as well as the dam. They also approached the Northern Pacific Railroad with a proposal to electrify and relocate its tracks across the Columbia River at the Priest Rapids Dam. Additionally, the brothers sought to develop an irrigation project on a large tract of land which they owned. As they stood to gain much from the increase in land values promised by the irrigation project, this element of the scheme, which was known as the Priest Rapids Highlands Project, received considerable attention from all three brothers.

The repeated inability to arrange financing of the project caused the two younger brothers to depart Seattle in February of 1928 and to spend the next three years trying to find financial backers for the Priest Rapids project. Their affairs in Seattle were left in the hands of Oscar Dam, who by then had risen to be one of the higher level officials at the Seattle Customs Office. Although the efforts of Dam Brothers took them around the United States and Canada in 1928, 1929 and 1930 and brought them into contact with British and American bond-buying syndicates and industrialists such as Henry Ford, they were unable to induce investors to back so large a project. Ultimately, in June 1930, the Federal Power Commission refused to renew the license for the Priest Rapids dam. Milton Dam then returned to Seattle and was later involved in real estate development in Central Washington. Everett Dam remained in New York as a securities trader.