News stories about the electricity crisis were a daily fixture on the front page of The News Tribune in the final weeks of 1929.
Photo courtesy:Tacoma News Tribune

“In December of 1929, the water levels behind Tacomas dams were at frightening lows and falling due to lack of rain, rivers and creeks feeding the reservoirs were freezing up, and there was a very real danger of ice being sucked into the dams’ turbines. The citys electricity was slashed immediately.”

“Something was wrong with October.

In 1929 Tacoma, the rain was missing, and the weather that did arrive out of the north and west was clear and icy cold.

The leaves on the deciduous trees were falling off green with frost, and the juncos and winter wrens were already searching the branches of the conifers.

Ordinarily, the city might consider the dry autumn a blessing, but instead it brought a disturbing reality to what was otherwise a source of immense civic pride.

Now, with winter coming on, the puzzling weather was starting to rattle the confidence of a city that had given itself over to the ultra modern miracle of unlimited electricity.

Tacoma was one of the first cities in America to build its own hydroelectric generation system by constructing the ambitious LaGrande Dam on the Nisqually River in 1912, ” quoting Michael Sean Sullivan; Contributing writer.
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