Grand Coulee Dam

The goal lay ahead; Grand Coulee Dam. I’ve wanted to come here since talking to an older lady some 30 years ago when Curt and I lived off the Hood Canal. She went on about her husband working on the Coulee Dam. Every other sentence had the words “Grand Coulee” and she was boisterous as some born and bread rural Washingtonians can be. Coulee Dam sounded so far off in Eastern Washington, I thought it would be a fluke if I ever got there. The fluke arrived on our last day out.

They say that by 1900 all the major dam sites have already been plotted. But it took FDR and the Great Depression to get moving on Grand Coulee. From the start in 1933 to its completion in 1942, thousands of men lived in make-shift cities and built the dam. About 81 died, mostly from falls and drowning.

You may or may not have heard of Grand Coulee but it dwarfs Hoover. Not as tall as Hoover but it’s certainly longer at just about a mile wide. It sends power to 11 states and irrigates the high desert of Eastern Washington.

It also caused problems; some of these problems have not been rectified. Remember Kettle Falls? The dam created Lake Roosevelt flooding over Kettle Falls. This was a major fishing area for a number of tribes in the area. The tribes lost a major part of their diet. Salmon were now blocked from swimming up stream and they still are. Fish hatcheries were built to help. Towns were razed and burial grounds had to be moved. It was messy in the end. The Indians receive a percentage of profits from the dam as compensation.

A laser show starts at 10:00 p.m. every night. It was a dud because the images cast upon the face of the dam weren’t clear. The show told the story of the coulee (gorge), the building of the dam, the benefits and a few of the problems.

We walked to the visitor’s center from our motel and later took a tour. Since 9/11 the tour has been radically reduced. We saw none of the hydroelectric generators. We did see the powerful Westinghouse and GE pumps that send the water through pipes and turn desert into fertile fields of wheat in Eastern Washington which normally receive just 5 to 10 inches of rain. We went through a metal screening and security in an SUV with tinted windows followed every tour.

The highlight of the day and night at Ground Coulee was the visitor’s center. The exhibits really take you back to the era when the dam was built. These were the days of Woody Guthrie and his song, “Roll On Columbia.” Crowds during our visit were minimal, even on a Saturday.