Public support drives Rocky Reach mural “Horsepower” toward museum display

WENATCHEE — What began as a routine agenda item on the Chelan PUD’s Public Power Benefit funding turned into a sustained reflection on shared memory, public art and local identity, as speaker after speaker urged Chelan County PUD commissioners Monday to place the monumental Walter Graham mural once housed in the Rocky Reach Dam Visitor’s Center on permanent loan to the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center.

The mural, called “Horsepower,” is a 32-foot by 16-foot painting that depicts a team of horses galloping up out of the Columbia River, symbolic of the electricity produced by the dam — and all of the dams along the river. It has been in storage for more than five years, since the renovation of the center.

Board chair Kelly Allen, who moved to the valley and was unaware of the mural until after it had already been removed from public view, appeared visibly struck by the turnout and the depth of testimony. “Boy — what support for this. This is phenomenal,” Allen said.

The proposal presented to commissioners would place the mural on permanent loan to the museum while allowing the PUD to retain ownership, using $600,000 in Public Power Benefit funding to support its conservation and installation as part of the museum’s renovation.

Felicity Saberhagen, the PUD business manager who delivered the presentation, also serves as president of the museum’s board.

Public testimony framed the mural as both a teaching tool and a cultural touchstone.

Terry Valdez, speaking as an educator, recalled first seeing the work as a child and later bringing students and youth groups to the dam, calling it “a wonderful teaching tool” that helped young people understand the story of hydropower and the valley’s development in a way that a classroom could not.

Artist Russ Hepler placed the mural in the context of historical record, telling commissioners that “the future of our humanity is written by the artists who record it” and recalling that he had watched Graham at work while the piece was being created.

Denise Marker, Graham’s niece, spoke about the work as part of her family’s legacy and as something intended from the beginning for public experience, saying it “was never meant to live in storage” but to be seen by the community it was created for.

One Wenatchee resident described being born here in 1975 and encountering the mural and the museum as two of the few places where local families could experience art, travel and world history without leaving town, arguing that its scale and its design for a curved architectural surface made it inseparable from the public setting for which it was created and that the museum now offered the closest possible return to that experience.

Commissioners responded with their own memories and with a sense that the discussion had been years in the making.

Carnan Bergren called the mural “beautiful and inspiring,” saying it visually connected the region’s natural power to the work of the utility.

Randy Smith said the board had talked for years about making sure “we cannot lose that mural.”

Steve McKenna described it as a piece that “tells stories all by itself,” calling it a powerful expression of the valley’s identity.

The museum’s renovation provides the first long-term opportunity to display the mural in a setting that meets preservation standards while keeping it accessible to the public, returning a work created for a specific place to a new space designed for community encounter.

With the board’s unanimous support, the mural is now on a path back into public view, this time not as a backdrop to a dam tour but as a central artifact in the story of the region that built it.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media