Roosevelt, Washington — Tiny River Community in Big Energy Country

Roosevelt sits beside the Columbia in eastern Klickitat County, with wheat and ranch country on the plateau above.

Transportation first made the river corridor useful. Rail lines followed the Columbia while farms shipped the output of a landscape capable of producing far more than its population would suggest.

Then electricity became another export. Hydropower turned the Columbia into a chain of reservoirs, and decades later wind turbines spread across the surrounding ridges to take advantage of persistent Columbia Hills winds.

The scale is strikingly mismatched. Roosevelt itself is tiny; the energy infrastructure around it is not.

A handful of neighbors can look out on a landscape producing power for people hundreds of miles away.