Forms part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
Collection is open for research.
Walter Ray Butcher was born in Riverside, California, in 1933. When he was 12 years old, he moved with his family to a farm in the Boise Valley in southwestern Idaho. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho, and later earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in agriculture from Iowa State University. In 1958, he married Elinor Ida Johnson; they moved to Pullman, Washington, where they raised three children. Butcher was a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Washington State University in Pullman for 34 years.
Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Butcher in his interview; Elinor I. Butcher's obituary, Corbill Funeral Homes website (accessed December 2025),
In 1990, the Washington State Historical Society, Portland State University, and Washington State University Vancouver formed the Center for Columbia River History (CCRH) to promote research, education, and public programs about the Columbia River Basin. The center operated for more than 20 years. Among its work was the Columbia River Basin Project (CRBP), an umbrella project supported by a 1997 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The CRBP included online exhibits, oral histories, and high school curricula about the history of the region's land, wildlife, and people.
As part of the project, CCRH partnered with the Oregon Historical Society Research Library’s oral history program, headed by Jim Strassmaier, to gather interviews. Oral Historian Michael O’Rourke spearheaded the Northwest Power Planning Council Oral History Series, while Oral Historian Clark Hansen oversaw the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series, with aid from two Portland State University research assistants, Dannette Rowe and Tania Hyatt. In addition, CCRH conducted oral history interviews for a third project, Columbia Communities, and later donated the interview recordings and transcripts to the OHS Research Library,
The Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series culminated in 59 interviews (approximately 184 recorded hours) conducted between 1998 and 2001. Interviewees included Native people, activists, farmers, conservationists, fishers, and others who contributed to the shaping of policies that have had, and continue to have, significant impacts on the Columbia River Basin in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia. The interviewees opposed policies by agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and advocated for alternative visions of management and use of the Columbia River.
Sources: "Voices of the Columbia," by Bryan White, PSU Magazine, Fall 1998, Page 17; Center for Columbia River History brochure, undated (circa 2000); Center for Columbia River History website (accessed July 10, 2025),
Forms part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
Oral history interview with Walter R. Butcher, by Clark Hansen, SR 2717, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This interview was previously cataloged as part of SR 2700.1, the Center for Columbia River History Oral Histories. SR 2700.1 included oral histories gathered for two separate projects: those conducted by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library for the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series, and those collected by the Center for Columbia River History for its Columbia Communities Project. In 2024-2025, as part of digitization of the Dissenters interviews, the collection was reprocessed to separate the two sets of interviews for improved access. Each of the 59 Columbia River Dissenters interviews was cataloged individually under the name of the interviewee. The interviews for the Communities project were kept together as a single collection that was redesignated as
Audio recording and transcript of an oral history interview with Walter R. Butcher that was conducted by Clark Hansen on October 23, 1999, at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, as part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
In this interview, Butcher discusses his family background, his early life on a farm in southwestern Idaho, and his experiences studying agriculture and economics at the University of Idaho and Iowa State University. He talks about briefly working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the early 1960s, and speaks extensively about government programs that benefit farmers, particularly the Columbia River Basin Irrigation Project. He also discusses how the irrigation projects affected Native people whose ancestral lands are along the Columbia River. He speaks in detail about his involvement in cost-benefit analyses of dams and irrigation projects in the Pacific Northwest, and about utility company studies that concerned energy forecasting. He discusses the failure of the Washington Public Power Supply System. He closes the interview by reflecting on his accomplishments.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,