Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam

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• published: 13 Feb 2013
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Grand Coulee is the largest dam in the Columbia River Basin and one of the largest in the world. Everything about the dam is large: it is 550 feet tall, measured from its foundation in solid granite, or approximately 350 feet from the downstream river surface to the top of the dam. It is 5,223 feet long (57 feet short of a mile). The dam is 500 feet thick at its base, 30 feet thick at the top and contains 11,975,521 cubic yards of concrete. The spillway is 1,300 feet wide and covers an area of 13.26 acres. 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 took nine years to build the dam, but even more years of battling and political maneuvering before construction even started. While it was recognized early in the century that the Columbia Basin had rich farmland that needed only water to flourish, the method for providing that water caused much controversy. A Spokane group insisted upon a 134-mile gravity flow canal from 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. Ultimately, the Great Depression and President Roosevelt's subsequent New Deal program gave concrete backing to the Grand Coulee Dam, as dam construction promised long-term employment for thousands of unemployed as well as a continuing economic boost to the region. The construction of the Grand Coulee Dam was the crown jewel of President Roosevelt's public works projects in the Pacific Northwest. The project employed tens of thousands of people. So many workers put in so many hours that the dam was finished two years ahead of schedule. 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. By the end of the construction, 77 men had lost their lives. Lake Franklin D. Roosevelt is the Columbia River backed up behind the dam. It is over 150 miles long with 630 miles of shore line. Creation of this reservoir forced the relocation of over 3,000 people, including Native Americans whose ancestral lands were partially flooded. Grand Coulee Dam flooded over 21,000 acres of prime bottom land where Native Americans had been living and hunting for thousands of years and forced the relocation of settlements and graveyards. Small communities and hunting grounds disappeared beneath the new lake, and the dam brought an end to the great salmon migrations to the rivers and streams above. In 1936, three years after construction began, the Columbia River still was flowing over the foundation of Grand Coulee Dam. By 1938, the rising dam would block the river In the 1950s, the American Society of Civil Engineers listed Grand Coulee as one of the seven civil engineering wonders of the United States Grand Coulee's primary goal was for irrigation purposes. However, hydroelectric power played a vital role as part of the war effort and as such the need for electricity would increase so Grand Coulee dam's primary goal changed. When completed in 1942, the dam provided the enormous electrical power necessary to make aluminum, so essential for World War II production of planes and ships. It was Grand Coulee that powered the production of plutonium at the nearby Hanford Site, which figured prominently in the making of the atomic bomb. Grand Coulee Dam was the center of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. Built as a public works project of the New Deal, it provided irrigation to approximately 700,000 acres in Eastern Washington, making the desert bloom via the Banks Lake reservoir. Grand Coulee Dam also produces 21 billion kilowatts of electricity each year, and recreational opportunities abound on Lake Roosevelt. The dam has three power plants housing 24 main generators and three smaller generators. The total generating capacity is 6,494,000 kilowatts. In 1967, construction began on the massive, 20-story-high, Third Power Plant, and today Grand Coulee is the largest hydropower producer in the United States, producing 21 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, or about 11 percent of the power requirements of the Pacific Northwest. Grand Coulee still ranks among the largest dams and top producers of electricity in the world, although it has been eclipsed in recent years by dams such China's Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, which has been criticized for its impacts on people and the ecosystem. Grand Coulee also has faced criticism, most notably for its impact on West Coast salmon and steelhead populations. Since 2011 Grand Coulee has been undergoing renovation work which is anticipated to take several more years. I do not hold copyrights on either the pictures or the music used in this slide show. It is my hope that you will view other slide shows I have made and will share links to those shows with your friends! Be well! Nina