Gathering Our Voice is a program of the Initiative for Rural Innovation & Stewardship (IRIS) that aims to inform and inspire our future by sharing success stories from individuals, families and organizations that can help the region grow. This fall, the column is highlighting successes from the community of Entiat, host of the NCW Community Success Summit held earlier this month.

Bob Whitehall’s family has been helping to shape the town of Entiat since his grandparents moved there from their wheat farm in Waterville in the early 1900s. At that time, the first town located at the mouth of the Entiat River, had just burned, creating what Bob said his grandparents saw as “a lot of opportunity with everything starting up again,” to rebuild the town along the rapid waters of the Columbia.

There have been many other opportunities to “start up again” in the years since the Whitehalls arrived in Entiat. According to the timeline developed by the Entiat High School Leadership Class, all or part of the town burned three times before 1921. The “second town” that was built north of the Entiat River on the shores of the Columbia was flooded when the gates on Rocky Reach Dam closed in 1961. The rising waters forced people to move their homes and businesses to higher ground creating the “third town” of Entiat that we know today.

Born in 1950, Bob Whitehall worked in the timber industry for many years before taking on the job of public works director for the City of Entiat in 1991. I talked with him recently about Entiat’s history and the town’s collective resolve to keep striving for a better future. Excerpts from that interview transcribed by AmeriCorps volunteer Maria Davis follow:

One of six children, Bob’s family lived in his grandparents’ three-story house in downtown Entiat in 1956 when the Chelan County PUD first contacted the City about building a dam, warning them that it would also probably flood their town. By 1958, the town started getting ripped out,” Bob said, with his family’s the last house on the block to go.

“Our house was too big to move,” he said, “so it was one of the few they had to tear down.”

He remembers walking to school with his sisters in the late 1950s and playing in the remnants of the houses that had been moved, including basements he described as “full of junk people didn’t want to take with them.” Most of his friends moved out of the area, he recalled, along with many of the businesses that had provided jobs for their families and the familiar street front of home.

Looking back to the years when they had to relocate the town, Bob agreed that it was a chaotic time in which the City didn’t have much of a chance to plan for change. “Decisions on how the town should be rebuilt were up in the air until the town was gone,” he said. “Even City Council members kept changing because they’d be moving,” further complicating the town’s ability to plan. “Most of the people here in town were just trying to figure out what they were going to do next,” Bob said.

It has taken years for Entiat to recover, Bob points out, from the unplanned relocation of the town in the 1950s. “We had struggled ever since the town moved to repair stuff,” he said referring to some of the big cuts they made while grading and rebuilding the town. “But we didn’t have any money,” due to the loss of so many businesses.

So Entiat started up again, fired by the people who have always made the town work. Volunteers stepped forward to help keep community programs running while the City increased their fundraising efforts, Bob told me.

Starting in 1991, Bob managed the development of all kinds of city improvements from fixing the leaky water system and building new sewage and composting plants to negotiating a land exchange that enabled the City to fix and improve their streets.

Currently the town is preparing for its biggest project yet — development of a portion of the town’s riverfront that will tie the river to the town and bring back some of the charm of the “second town” that was drowned in 1961.

Nearing retirement with so many accomplishments behind him, I asked Bob to reflect on what it is he loves the most about the community of Entiat. “When there’s something that needs to be done or something we feel isn’t right,” he said, “there is a great resolve among the people here to fix it. If an issue comes up it’s just like a forest fire as far as spreading through the community. And you get the support out there that you need. It’s amazing. It helps get things moving.”

To read the transcript of this interview and the Entiat Historical Timeline, see gatheringourvoice.org or contact the IRIS office at irisncw@gmail.com, 888-7374.