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Home / Washington Business - Spring 2003 / Grand Coulee Dam: Washington's Wonder of the World |
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Grand Coulee Dam: Washington's Wonder of the World |
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Written On: Spring 2003 |
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Written By: By Earl Roberge |
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"I know it’s real because it is right here infront of me, but it is still hard to believe!”
“It’s the reason concrete was invented.”
Visitors to Grand Coulee Dam register these reactions when first viewing this gigantic concrete monolith spanning the Columbia River in central Washington. It is so incongruous in its high-desert setting that the mind temporarily rebels at accepting the impression it conveys. In time, of course, it is accepted for what it is—one of the greatest hydrological construction projects ever conceived by the mind of man. The awe it inspires lasts a lifetime. One does not readily forget Grand Coulee Dam—Washington’s Wonder of the World.
Something this big did not just happen spontaneously. Geologists knew the present channel of the Columbia River was relatively new dating back only 15,000 years, a mere blink in geological time. The old channel where Banks Lake currently sits was gouged out by a monstrous prehistoric glacier some 20 miles long and known as the Grand Coulee.
Columbia Lifting Itself by Bootstraps
Billy Clapp, an Ephrata lawyer and amateur geologist, knew about the Grand Coulee, which was higher in elevation than most of the Columbia Basin. So did his friend, Rufus Woods, the publisher of the Wenatchee World. They often talked about a grandiose vision of plugging the Columbia and pumping its water into a system of arteries to feed the fertile arid lands in Central Washington—an area equivalent in size to Belgium.
They knew water would flow mostly by gravity once it splashed into the Coulee. Wherever gravity failed, a helping lift would come from powerful pumps sparked by electricity from the dam. Clapp envisioned a river lifting itself by its own bootstraps.
Like all good ideas this one had to wait for the right time and the right man. Those forces aligned in 1933 when the nation was in the iron grip of the Great Depression. The man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a visionary who promised to build the Grand Coulee Project during his initial presidential campaign.
Critics Said It was Electrifying Gopher Holes
Eastern Congressmen derided the project as a boondoggle in the western desert. They jokingly claimed, “…that if you electrified every gopher hole in Washington State you still couldn’t use all that juice.” Still on September 3, 1933 the
stakes for the axis of the dam were driven and work began.
The building of Grand Coulee is in itself an American saga. Into the desert poured a ragtag army lured by jobs paying the munificent rate of 50 cents an hour. Tents and lean-tos filled the towns of Electric City, Grand Coulee and Mason City which sprang up overnight. Bars and brothels started doing a roaring, round-the-clock business recreating the atmosphere of a California Gold Rush camp.
The bars weren’t the only things working round the clock. Under glaring sun or banks of floodlights the work never stopped. Concrete was poured, the river channel was juggled from side to side, and columns of concrete were fused into the monolith, which little by little began to bestride the Columbia. Miles of refrigeration pipe were embedded into the concrete, an exothermic material, to dispel the accumulated heat, which could have otherwise threatened the stability of the dam. Those pipes became part of the reinforcement. It was “learn as you earn,” and indeed many of the processes that were pioneered at Grand Coulee have become standard operating procedures all over the world.
It was hard, dangerous work. Eightynine men lost their lives during construction, but theirs is as imposing a monument as exists on Earth.
Bigger than Four Pyramids
When work was completed, the best way to describe the Grand Coulee Dam is “humongous.” Its base could fit four Grand Pyramids at Gaza with room to spare, and those pyramids would be almost 100-feet short of the dam’s crest.
The dam was a fantastic bargain. It was built during the Great Depression, when wages and material prices were at rock bottom prices. It couldn’t be duplicated today for eighty times its cost and even if it could it probably would not be approved because of environmental sensitivities. For example, because of its great height (550 feet) Coulee was built without fish ladders. It cut out all of the Canadian spawning grounds for Columbia River salmon, almost one third of its total area. Today, that would not be tolerated.
Coulee Power Built Our Air Armada
There was another very vital reason why it was built at the right time. The dam was completed in 1942. Its eighteen 105 kilowatt generators, at the time the world’s largest, provided the electricity necessary to refine the aluminum. That light weight, durable metal went into Boeing’s heavy bombers, which leveled German factories supplying Hitler’s vaunted war machine. Huge blocks of power went to a highly secret installation at Hanford whose purpose was unknown until incandescent fireballs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki heralded the end of World War II, the defeat of the Japanese Empire, and the birth of the Atomic Age. Critics of the dam are only slightly embarrassed by the part it played in winning the war. They were quick to ask: “What are you going to do with all that power when the war-plants shut down?” Their answer came quickly. Even though the original generators were rewound to a 125,000 Kilowatt capacity, the energy demands soon necessitated the Third Powerhouse phase of the dam. It was planned from the beginning but it had been estimated that it might be 50 years before it was needed.
Monstrous Generators Add “The Juice”
The six monstrous generators of the new installation put out more combined energy than the original 18. To say that these generators are huge is an understatement. The shafts that connect the turbines to the generators are more than 12-feet in diameter and dwarf a large man standing next to them. Just one of these gigantic machines can power a city the size of Portland.
With the completion of the Third Powerhouse, Grand Coulee is now the greatest power producer in the United States and among the tops in the world. There are plants in South America and China with a greater capacity, but there are none with the multiple benefits.
Grand Coulee also sets the good example for what can be accomplished when neighboring nations work together. Although, a significant part of the Columbia River originates in Canada, stream flows are regulated by computers up and down the system as part of a bilateral
treaty.
Security Beefed Up at the Dam
Situated as it is in the middle of nowhere, Grand Coulee Dam nevertheless is the premiere tourist attraction every year luring more than a million visitors into the Eastern Washington desert.
In the aftermath of 9-11, security is tight. The Dam is a prime target for terrorists. It would probably take a nuclear bomb to breach the massive structure, but that is exactly what the security forces are guarding against. Were the Grand Coulee broken the resulting flood would devastate the whole Columbia Valley all the way to the Pacific wiping out Wenatchee, the TriCities and Portland.
One of the side benefits of the Dam is not yet fully utilized. Lake Franklin Delano Roosevelt reaches almost to the Canadian Border and is a veritable recreational wonderland.
There are wonderful campgrounds tucked away beside the lake, boatlaunching ramps and deserted beaches, all free and open to the public. There is much more to Grand Coulee
than can be covered in this issue of Washington Business. If Billy Clapp and Rufus Woods could see what they started, they would be so proud! Grand Coulee is truly Washington’s Wonder of the World.
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