Coffee with the Curator

Keep local history local!

Learn how to make your history part of the museum and keep your local history local! Chat with the Museum Curator, enjoy light breakfast, reminisce, and learn about upcoming museum programs.

upcoming Events

Snapshots of farm-in-a-day: Irrigation celebrated

Date: March 2, 2022
Time: 9:30 - 10:30 am
Location: Civic Center Auditorium/Museum Classroom, 401 S. Balsam St.

Please join us for coffee, tea, and bagels as we learn to save history! This month’s presentation will explore the photographs in the City of Moses Lake Museum’s collection of “Farm-in-a-Day, ” a publicity event that celebrated the new irrigation opportunities of the Columbia Basin Irrigation project.  Beginning at 12:01 a.m. on May 29, 1952, over 200 hundred volunteers cleared the land near Road 4 SE in Moses Lake of sagebrush and rocks, leveled the ground, and constructed an entire farm, which included a furnished home, outbuildings, and planted crops in a 24-hour period. The Veterans of Foreign Wars conducted a search for the "most worthy veteran" of either World War II or the Korean War to award the farm to. Donald Dunn, a World War II veteran and Kansas farmer who was displaced by flood waters was chosen to receive the eighty-acre farm. The Museum has numerous photographs documenting the building of the Farm-in-a-Day home and outbuildings and candid shots of the Dunn family enjoying their new house. Join us to see this visual documentation of an event that brought fame and recognition to Moses Lake while marking a milestone of the introduction of irrigation water.