Science: Endless Frontier

"Information for Settlers," says the sign over a door of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation headquarters in fast-growing little Ephrata, Wash. (1950 pop. 4,584). The word settlers, as used there, is no nostalgic recall of old frontier days. Inside the door sit the 1951 settlers themselves, sun-weathered men & women who have come to Ephrata in search of a new frontier—the irrigated farmland created out of sagebrush desert by Grand Coulee Dam. They ask sober, practical questions, but in their eyes glows the same high excitement that built the U.S. The bureau believes that they are only forerunners of millions or...

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