Proclamation 3800—Thirtieth Anniversary of the Bonneville Project Act

Until the 20th of August 1937, the great Columbia River System was an untamed, untapped resource.

On that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Bonneville Project Act—and a new era began in the Pacific Northwest.

Within a few years after its creation, the Bonneville system was providing power for the aircraft factories, the shipyards, and other critical industries of World War II.

Now, thirty years later, the Bonneville Power Administration is the Nation's largest hydroelectric utility. It utilizes twenty-one Federal dams, and nine more are under construction.

Today—through the facilities of the Bonneville Power Administration—Pacific Northwest families use more than ten times as much electricity as they did in 1910.

In the future, Bonneville will play a central role in complex power systems extending from the Canadian Treaty dams in British Columbia to Southern California and Arizona.

It is appropriate that Americans should celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of an Act that has contributed so greatly to our economic development.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim August 20, 1967, as Bonneville Project Day. I urge State and local public officials, industrial leaders, the press, and all private citizens in the Pacific Northwest and around the Nation to join in observing the Bonneville anniversary.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of August in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House