By Eli Sanders, Globe Correspondent, 12/1/2002

SOAP LAKE, Wash. - This economically depressed city on the arid plains of eastern Washington has been searching for something to bring back its glory days, when tourists were drawn by the lake's purported healing qualities.

Now Soap Lake's leaders are hoping a vision that came to a local design consultant as he returned from an economic development conference can revitalize this community that considers itself a haven for artists. They're thinking big. They're thinking 1970s.

''I just for some reason thought of this lava lamp,'' Brent Blake recalled. ''It just seemed one of those kind of funny ideas, then I went out and bought one and started putting some little people around it. And then I started taking it more seriously.''

The City Council is also taking it seriously. In October the council voted in support of building a working 60-foot-tall lava lamp on Main Street to draw tourists and help local businesses.

''Wouldn't you stop to see a lava lamp?'' asked Councilwoman Leslie Slough. ''A great big one?''

Soap Lake's desperate grab for attention reflects the economic times in the Northwest. Washington has been trading places with Oregon and Alaska this year for the state with the highest unemployment rate. After hitting a high of 7.6 percent in January, Washington's unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent in October, remaining above the national average of 5.7 percent.

But concerns about support for the jobless have increased because Congress did not extend unemployment benefits before adjourning. In the western part of the state, an unemployment center in Everett reported a 71 percent increase in inquiries.

In Soap Lake, a city of 1,700 where 68 percent come from low-income families, the hard times have stoked nostalgia for the good old days, when tourists helped fill the city's coffers.

In the 1950s, Soap Lake drew people with psoriasis who thought the water would heal them. It also drew soldiers from World War I whose skin had been damaged by mustard gas. But then the lake ran into competition from modern medications - and the lake lost.

''Back in the '50s, the town was really busy, and since then it's really gone downhill,'' Slough said. ''A small town on a lake should not be dying, it should be growing, so what we're trying to do is develop some kind of tourism. And to get tourists in town, you need some kind of an attraction.''

Soap Lake's lava lamp proposal is the latest of a series of desperate measures that small communities have considered in an effort to turn their fortunes around.

The California town of Biggs recently considered a request from the California Milk Processor Board to change its name to ''Got Milk?'' A town official suggested the change could be worth $2 million in curb and gutter work, but local voters rejected the idea.

The rural Oregon town of Halfway changed its name in 2000 to Half.com, after an Internet shopping site run by eBay. In return, the town got 20 school computers, a prize for the county fair raffle, and money for civic improvements.

But why would Soap Lake pin its hopes on a 1970s icon often associated with smoke-filled dorm rooms and far-out fantasies?

Boosters offer varying explanations why a giant lava lamp makes perfect sense in Soap Lake: Lava lamps are thought to have therapeutic qualities, and so is Soap Lake; and a giant prehistoric lava flow played an important part in forming the region.

However, the city doesn't have enough cash in its coffers to build the lava lamp, which is expected to cost at least $3 million.

So, with the blessing of Mayor Ken Lee and the City Council, Blake is soliciting donations and state grants.

''I just believe that if you are passionate and committed, anything is possible,'' Blake said.

Still, Blake, for one, said he worries about finding someone who can make a 60-foot-tall glass container, and that a giant lava lamp might prove too seductive a target for gun-toting locals.

And there are more fundamental questions about what the locals insist is absolutely not a hare-brained scheme: Would the lava lamp's ingredients still bubble on such a grand scale? How would the heating elements work?

Those questions are for later, Blake says. For now he's busy talking to state tourism officials and enjoying all the attention his idea has been getting.

All of which proves that the lava lamp is a cultural icon with an enduring allure, says John Glassco, who has been helping Blake with his campaign.

''The idea is fundamentally sound,'' he said, ''kind of like the yo-yo.''

This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 12/1/2002.

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