VISITORS’ GUIDE • GRAND COULEE DAM AREA • 2017 - 2018
In some years, you may be lucky enough to see a big "spill" of water over the top of the dam, but not often. Visitor tours usually do include a spectacular bus stop on top of Grand Coulee Dam to take photos from the top of the massive spillway and roiling river below. Some people find it hard to grasp the size of the dam, often thinking it’s smaller than it is. A careful peek over the edge is called for, and more than a few selfies are taken with smartphones.
Grand Coulee Dam Facts When was Grand Coulee Dam built and by whom? The U.S.Bureau of Reclamation began construction of Grand Coulee Dam in 1933 as the key structure in its multipurpose Columbia Basin Project. It has since become the linchpin in harnessing the second largest river in the United States. It took nine years to build the dam, but even more years of battling and political maneuvering before construction started. While it was recognized early in the century that the Columbia Basin had rich farmland that only needed water to flourish, the method for providing that water caused much controversy. A Spokane group insisted upon a 134-mile gravity-flow canal from 8
Lake Pend Oreille to the Basin, while a Wenatchee/ Central Washington group favored building a big dam on the Columbia at Grand Coulee. The battle raged for 13 years. At its conclusion, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized $60 million to get the dam project started. In the Grand Coulee, life changed dramatically and quickly once work on the dam began in 1933. Not only did the undertaking of this massive project forever change the shape of the river, but overnight it created towns where nothing but sagebrush, sand and rocks had previously existed. Thousands came to the Grand Coulee looking for work in the midst of the Depression. They worked around the clock to finish the dam by 1942.