I’ve often said that the most enduring legacy from the boomtown days for this community remains a sense of ingenuity. Certainly that’s what marked the contributions of thousands of people who helped design and build the biggest hydroelectric dam in North America.
Emil Gehrke’s windmills, made of what most of us might have called junk, now stand as folk art at North Dam Park, a testament to inventiveness and creativity, and perhaps moving (literally) symbols of the modern ethic of “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.”
I remember as a child going up to a house in Grand Coulee with my step dad and the back yard was full of these. I’m not sure if this was Emil’s house…I think it was. It’s something that I have always had a fond memory of.
Glad you mentioned that Karie. They talk about his home in Electric City in this video, but I believe it was in Grand Coulee.