Biographical note

Floyd William Harvey was born in Lewiston, Idaho, in 1925. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Force. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Washington State College (now Washington State University) in Pullman in 1950, and started a river tourism business near the Hells Canyon area in 1968. In the 1960s, Harvey was among those who lobbied against private utilities and public power agencies over the proposed construction of the High Mountain Sheep Dam in Hells Canyon, near the confluence of the Snake and the Salmon Rivers. After the Federal Power Commission issued a license for the dam in February 1964 despite opposition, the U.S. Department of the Interior sued. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice William O. Douglas, ruled against the commission, ordering it to reconsider, and the dam was ultimately never built. Harvey, as a result of his lobbying efforts, appeared on the television program “To Tell the Truth.” Harvey died in 2010.

Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Harvey in his interview; Harvey’s obituary in The Lewiston Tribune, August 10, 2010; “Floyd Harvey, Hells Canyon Advocate Dead at 84,” by Eric Barker, Lewiston Tribune, August 13, 2010; "Hells Canyon," Northwest Power and Conservation Council website (undated, accessed January 2026), https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/hellscanyon/

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