MOSES LAKE — The pounding of the drum reverberated over the sound of nearby traffic from I-90 as singers sang the honor song. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville elder Barb Aripa blessed the site at the southwest corner of South Wanapum Drive and West Lakeshore Drive where the tribe will build a truck stop, with a convenience store and gas station, on a 9.25-acre parcel of land.

To the Colville, whose ancestral lands stretched well up into Canada, down to Oregon and east to nearby Spokane, it was coming home with their third off-reservation project. To Moses Lake mayor Todd Voth, representatives of the Grant County Economic Development Council and Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce, it was good business. Groundbreaking for the project, which includes building a 11,000-square-foot building with two different fueling locations, one for retail customers and one for commercial trucks, was the nine years of work.

The new travel plaza will be called Colville Fuels Half-Sun Travel Plaza.

“We want to welcome everyone here today. It’s nice to see all the different entities we’ve worked with together and tried to build partnerships with,” said Billy Nicholson, who is the secretary of the tribal business council. “The tribal council had the vision to move forward and buy this property and work with all the processes to get to this point. I look forward to seeing a great project here in the future and something that our tribe can be proud of and something the people of Moses Lake can be proud of as well.”

The site of the project's location is on non-reservation Tribal Trust Allotment Lands, that are within the “aboriginal territories” of the The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, according to the tribe. The United States holds beneficial title to the property, which the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) administers as the federal trust agency.

Voth says the project is historic in nature and a nice bit of business for Moses Lake.

“The Colville Nation has lot of new fresh ideas. They are in the process of partnering with us to improve some of the streets around this property, which is going to open up some grant money to help finish some of the neighborhood streets,” Voth explained, “We always look forward to having new business come through Moses Lake. This is their third off-reservation project and it’s a big process for them. They’ve been working on this for years, so we’re hoping they will be an active participant in the things we have here in Moses Lake. They are going to be doing some work on the interchange coming in here.”

The project includes: separate covered fuel dispensing islands for tractor trailers and standard vehicles, underground fuel storage and product delivery systems, a truck scale, an automated car wash, asphalt parking, driveways and road surfaces, signage, safety lighting and connection to local utilities, according to the tribe.