Grand Coulee Dam -- Our Eighth Wonder -- The Massive Columbia River Dam Keeps Churning Out The Power And Drawing In The Tourists

PART FIVE

Today's articles on the Grand Coulee Dam are the fifth in a Seattle Times series featuring "Washington's Best" attractions. The series is written by Don Duncan, a veteran Times reporter (now retired).

". . . River while you ramble, you can do some work for me . . . Your power is turning our darkness into dawn, so roll on, Columbia, roll on!"

-- Woody Guthrie ------------------------------------------------------------------- Make no mistake. The Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River is more than a monumental engineering feat worthy of being called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

It's a ringing social statement, an affirmation of what a government with vision can accomplish when times are tough.

And it's also an example of a massive public project whose cumulative effects on its surroundings are being criticized by people concerned for the environment.

The project was begun back in 1933, during the Great Depression, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt forged ahead with two hydroelectric-dam projects - Bonneville, on the lower Columbia, and Grand Coulee, on the upper Columbia.

When completed in 1942, Grand Coulee would be the world's largest hydroelectric dam. Its power would light homes and turn the wheels of industry (especially needed in wartime); its water would irrigate tens of thousands of acres of farmland in Eastern Washington, and it would be the keystone in a 11-dam flood-control system on the river between Canada and the Pacific Ocean.

And, vital in the mid 1930s, its construction would put people back to work. For the rest of the decade it would be the largest construction project in the United States.

Jobless men and their wives and children arrived at the dam site in jalopies, with all their worldly goods piled on top.

Population at the dam site grew from about 45 to 16,000 at the height of construction. Of those, 9,000 worked directly on the dam. Seventy-seven would lose their lives on the project.

Ramshackle cabins sprouted on the dry land amid the sagebrush. Women nursed babies in tents. An enterprising barber set up a shower in a back room and charged customers two-bits for two minutes of running water.

Instant towns were born: Mason City (today's Coulee Dam). Grand Coulee. Coulee. Grand Coulee Heights. Electric City. Engineer's Town. Government Town. Delano.

Grand Coulee's B Street, the rip-roaring, blowing-off-steam place for construction workers, featured taverns with Wild West bar doors and brothels with walls almost as thin as tissue paper.

Even today, what those workers accomplished in building the dam with what now might be called primitive equipment seems awesome.

During the nine years of construction, they excavated 45 million cubic yards of rock and soil, and poured 12 million cubic yards of concrete to form a dam 550 feet high and 5,232 feet across. (That's enough concrete to build a two-lane highway from Seattle to Miami, add a 3-foot-wide sidewalk alongside and have one-million cubic yards left over for projects around the house.)

The dam formed the 151-mile-long Lake Roosevelt; water from the lake was released to 16 generators in the powerhouses on each side of the dam. The excess water flowed over the 320-foot tall and 1,650-foot-wide spillway to continue on as the Columbia River.

Another lake - 27 miles long and named after Frank Banks, then chief engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation - was created when water was pumped from Lake Roosevelt 283 feet above the dam into the Grand Coulee. It provides water for more than 500,000 acres of arid Eastern Washington within the Columbia Basin Irrigation District.

Work continues today on a complex system of siphons, tunnels, earth-filled dams and thousands of miles of ditches and tunnels. When completed, sometime in the next century, the irrigation basin will grow to 1.2 million acres. Yet all of this irrigation takes away only three percent of the river's water.

Shortly after the dam began turning out power, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. soon was embroiled in war. Almost overnight, an energy-intensive aluminum industry was created along the Columbia and helped produce 60,000 airplanes for the war effort in just two years.

Just as the irrigation project continues to grow, so, too, does the dam. A third powerhouse was completed in the 1970s. It increased the dam's power by about 30 percent - to 6.5 million kilowatts or 8.5 million horsepower.

Visitors may arrive at Grand Coulee Dam by several routes, each of which tells it own story of how wind, erosion and ice carved and shaped this vast expanse of gullies, canyons and cliffs.

Don't be surprised if at first the dam doesn't seem as big as advertised. It's a matter of scale. The coulee - a deep gully - in which the dam sits is itself enormous.

Slowly the light will dawn. The cars you see atop the dam so far away aren't toys - they're real. And those aren't ants, they're people.

Start your exploration at the $1.6 million circular-shaped Visitor Arrival Center, opened in 1978.

Among the Visitor Center's glass-encased displays are the wheelchair in which the polio-crippled President Roosevelt sat when he visited the construction site on Aug. 4, 1934 (he also visited on Oct. 2, 1937).

A 13-minute film is background for the self-guided tours. It begins with a geology lesson, telling how, long before humankind discovered the place, sheets of lava formed basaltic rock up to 10,000 feet deep in places. The rock was then carved and scraped by glaciers that came down from the Arctic. Floods followed, and so did the river - the third longest in the U.S., with the steepest grade.

The film's musical theme, "Roll on, Columbia, Roll On," is by folk-singing legend Woody Guthrie, hired by the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941 to write 30 songs in 30 days for the princely sum of $10 a song.

Indians called the mighty rush of water "The Big River." Capt. Robert Gray came upon the river in 1792 and named it Columbia after his vessel.

The first white settlers had dreams of farming; the soil was excellent, but after a few seasons, the lack of rainfall turned the earth to dust.

In the early 1900s, dreamers like Billy Clapp, an Ephrata lawyer, and Rufus Woods, publisher of The Wenatchee World newspaper, realized the potential of the vast land and began pushing the idea of a dam to provide electricity, flood control, irrigation and recreation.

All of those things are a reality now, including the preservation of tens of thousands of acres of marshlands within the project and weekend powerboat racing on Banks Lake in the summers. A flood of visitors

Over 2 million visitors a year are encouraged to explore the dam at their leisure.

They drive atop the dam - once forbidden - and get a first-hand impression of its size.

They ride elevators hundreds of feet down into the dam's interior, walking through long tunnels and peer through windows at massive spinning turbines and complicated instrument panels. One of the more exciting rides is the glass-enclosed incline elevator on the face of the Third Powerhouse.

Later, they can visit Grand Coulee's once-notorious B Street, where a construction boss once air-conditioned a house of ill-repute to make things more pleasant for his men. All that remains are a few broken-down trailers, weed-filled streets and remnants of Mom's Tavern. Also worth a visit: The Colville Confederated Tribes Museum & Gift Shop, on Birch Street in Coulee Dam (the Colville Indian Reservation extends north from the dam and along Lake Roosevelt) and the Coulee Dam Town Museum, lower level of city hall on the corner of Lincoln and Douglas Avenues, which offers a pictorial and scrapbook history of the dam from its beginnings in 1933 through the completion of the Third Powerhouse four decades later. Seeing the laser show

It's not touted, but don't miss Crown Point Vista, which offers a spectacular view of the dam, Lake Roosevelt, Rufus Woods Lake (below the dam) and the town of Coulee Dam.

It's the best place to take photographs of the dam and one of several excellent sites from which to view the 30-minute laser-light show that covers the face of the dam each evening from Memorial Day to Sept. 30. The audio portion of the show is broadcast by Grand Coulee's local radio station, KEYG 1490 AM and 98.5 FM.

Other good viewing spots are the Visitor Arrival Center, the parking lot at the base of the Third Power Plant and the bleacher seats across from the Coulee House motel (in the town of Coulee Dam). All have stereo loudspeaker systems.

Sit under the stars and wait. One moment there's chatter, the next there's a hush as the spillway is bathed in blue light and white water begins to slide down its length.

The story of the Grand Coulee unfolds with music, narration, and 300-foot-high blue, red and green images. The story line is compelling and the animated cartoons excellent. But an overdone patriotic segment, featuring the vocal excesses of Neil Diamond, makes one yearn for the simplicity of Woody Guthrie.

The `bad side.' Grand Coulee Dam has had some negative impacts. K 4. ------------------------------------------------------------------- IF YOU GO

Planning a trip to Grand Coulee

Seattle-area travelers should allow at least two days for a visit to Grand Coulee Dam; it's a 500-mile round-trip journey. Spend the night in one of the towns near the dam.

Driving route - From Seattle, take the Stevens Pass Highway (No. 2) toward Wenatchee - passing through Leavenworth, that Swiss-look-alike village, and then following the swiftly flowing Wenatchee River as firs give way to pines.

You may want to stop at the tidy little town of Cashmere, home to a uniquely Washington state confection, "aplets and cotlets," developed by Armenian immigrants Mark Balaban and Armnen Tertsagian while experimenting with fruit-and-nut candies on a kitchen stove.

Just north of Wenatchee, cross the Columbia River bridge and head north on Highway 97, past orchards and fruit stands. Don't miss the Ohme Gardens (just north of Wenatchee off Highway 97), a meticulously groomed garden with sweeping views of the valley and the Columbia.

At Orondo (about 12 miles from the bridge), turn east on Highway 2 toward Waterville. As you leave the river valley and the irrigated orchards and begin to climb, the hills become increasingly barren.

Once up on the flat plateau, the earth is brown with wheat. Small twisters dance over the landscape. And huge transmission lines, like something out of a high-tech movie, march across the treeless expanse.

In Waterville, check out some of the well-kept older houses, then press on across Moses Coulee toward Coulee City, which bills itself as "The Friendliest Town in the West."

Coulee City is pretty much in the middle of the 50-mile-long Ice Age bed of the Columbia River. When the glaciers retreated and a great ice dam melted, permitting the river to resume its original course, the massive coulees (deep ravines or gullies) were left pretty much dry, as we see them today.

The Upper Coulee begins at Dry Falls and extends north 26 miles to Grand Coulee Dam; the Lower Coulee begins extends south from Dry Falls about 20 miles to Soap Lake.

The Upper Coulee averages about 800 feet in depth and is 3 to 5 miles wide; the Lower Coulee is about 400 feet deep and roughly the same width.

Just below Dry Falls is one of Washington's most popular state parks, Sun Lakes.

Just north of Coulee City, pick up Highway 155 north. The country at times will seem as alien as the landscape of the moon - yawning canyons, towering cliffs, orange and yellow rock, and, usually, not another living soul in sight.

About half way to Coulee Dam, where Banks Lake widens, you're suddenly driving alongside Steamboat Rock - 800 feet high, two miles long and half-a-mile wide - a Titanic-shaped chunk of basalt rising out of the water. Upper Grand Coulee's Banks Lake is where water is stored for the Columbia Basin Irrigation project.

By now, you can almost feel the presence of Grand Coulee Dam. Drive along the lake, passing quickly through Electric City and Grand Coulee. Finally, you see the dam and the city of Coulee Dam.

Motels, restaurants - There are various motels close to the dam. The largest and best-situated is the Coulee House, which has a first-rate view of the face of the spillway.

Besides the R&A Cafe attached to the Coulee House, there are several other good-sized restaurants across the river in Grand Coulee. None, however, is a threat to any of Seattle's finest eateries.

Fishing and more - Should you tire of dam-watching, there is year-around fishing in Banks Lake, Lake Roosevelt and Rufus Woods Lake. Lake Roosevelt also is a haven for bald eagles and a popular spot to rent houseboats, to go water skiing and fishing.

More information - For information on the dam, lodgings and more, contact: Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 760, Grand Coulee, WA 99133. Phone 1-509-633-3074. -- Don Duncan