Columbia Chronicles A Powerful Attraction Nation’s Largest Hydroelectric Dam Hardly On The Beaten Path, But Grand Coulee Has A Mystique That Draws People

Lake Roosevelt begins gradually, almost imperceptibly, like spring blending into summer.

As a boater drifts south, the current slows and the surface becomes calm.

It happens about 10 miles downstream from the Canadian border, although the exact spot varies with the level of the lake.

There is no question where Lake Roosevelt ends.

The spot, 150 river miles from Canada, is marked by a giant concrete slab called Grand Coulee Dam and the sound of people speaking in every tongue of the industrial world.

It is an irony of Grand Coulee that the folks who live around the dam have few neighbors, but meet people from around the world.

“We’ve had every state in the union so far this year,” said Jack Hilson, a retired newspaper man and the dam’s oldest tour guide at age 70.

Thousands of men and women came to Central Washington to build Grand Coulee Dam during the Depression. Hundreds of thousands come here now to see it.

It is not the biggest tourist attraction in Washington. But no other siphons so many people so far from airports, interstate highways and major cities.

“People who go to the Space Needle don’t go to Seattle just to see the Space Needle,” said Craig Sprankle, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Reclamation, which runs the dam.

“People who come to Grand Coulee come here just to see the dam. We’re not on the beaten path.”

The guest book one rainy day last week showed visitors from 20 states coast to coast and engineering students from Romania and India. Sprankle counted guests from 24 nations one Labor Day weekend a few years back.

“There’s a mystique about dams, the biggest ones, that draws people,” said Sprankle.

These days, people come to see what the nation could create before it began worrying about the environment and the national debt. They come because they or perhaps husbands, fathers or brothers helped build the dam.

For many Americans, Grand Coulee is one stop on a circuit. Their motor homes are plastered with stickers from national landmarks.

“We’re doing national parks,” said Ruth Drehfal of Menomonee Falls, Wis. “We went to Yellowstone and Glacier and we saw Hoover Dam. Now, Grand Coulee,” before heading to North Cascades National Park.

Rudy Massman of San Diego was going to Alberta. He couldn’t cross the Northwest without seeing Grand Coulee. “I’m a civil engineer,” he explained.

The tourists stroll through the visitors’ center where Woody Guthrie tunes play over and over. They see the wheelchair President Franklin Roosevelt used during a visit. They buy T-shirts and shot glasses to prove they’ve seen the nation’s largest hydroelectric dam.

Then, while they’re killing time before dark and waiting for a laser light show that turns the spillway into a high-tech theater, a few take the time to go inside the dam.

“This is the fourth time we’ve been to the light show,” said Patt Clark of Lacey, Wash. “This is the first time we’ve done the tour” of the dam.

Tourism grew at Grand Coulee when the laser shows started in 1989. But visitors were common at the dam even before it was completed. As many as 1,000 neatly dressed spectators watched from wooden bleachers each day as lean, gritty men poured concrete during dam construction.

They often were joined by some of the nation’s most influential figures.

Hilson, whose family chronicled dam construction through its newspaper, the Grand Coulee Star, was there for Roosevelt’s visits.

He has a picture of a bare-footed, cigar-smoking Sen. Warren Magnuson in the Hilson home. He became friends with Sen. Henry Jackson.

He knew the dam builders and promoters for whom Banks and Billy Clapp and Rufus Woods lakes were named.

Hilson saw the dam built and expanded, but is just as impressed now as the 14-year-old Ohio boy who saw it for the first time last week.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the boy, Luke Jaite.

“It still gets to me,” said Hilson.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Two Color Photos

MEMO: These sidebars appeared with the story: 1. Q & A: Grand Coulee Dam Here are the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about Grand Coulee Dam: Is Grand Coulee as big as Hoover Dam? Depends on how it’s measured. Hoover, on the Colorado River, is half again as tall, but Grand Coulee is more than four times longer, spanning nearly a mile. Grand Coulee required three times the concrete of Hoover. Grand Coulee produces more electricity than any other in the nation. It ranks third worldwide, behind two dams in South America. What happens to the electricity produced at Grand Coulee? “If you could see the power … you could follow it right into Los Angeles,” said tour guide Jack Hilson. “Forty percent of our power goes to California.” Who runs the dam and owns the electricity it produces? The federal government, through the Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration. Is electricity stored for times when it is needed most? Electricity can only be stored in batteries, none of which are used to preserve Grand Coulee’s power. Why was the dam built? To provide irrigation for Central Washington farms. Electricity was secondary. How many workers died building the dam? Seventy-seven during initial construction; another three during dam expansion in the 1970s. Some are buried in the nearby town of Almira, but most bodies were sent to their hometowns. “We try to assure people there’s no one buried in the concrete,” said Hilson. What does coulee mean? It’s a French term for dry valleys carved by glaciers or floods. Geologists believe the coulees in Central Washington were carved by Ice Age floods. The Grand Coulee Dam visitors center is open from 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Dam tours start hourly from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the third power house, which is clearly marked. A laser light show on the dam face starts at 10 p.m. through July 31; at 9:30 p.m. during August; and at 8:30 p.m. in September. The show is 35 minutes. -Dan Hansen

2. U.S. built beauty of a town Nestled near the river, the dam and cliffs created by ancient floods, the west side of Coulee Dam may be the prettiest neighborhood on the Columbia. Uncle Sam was its architect. The town was home to the engineers and bosses who oversaw construction of the town’s namesake. Most of its buildings date to the early 1930s and are a mix of federal and Cape Cod architecture. The government named the streets for counties that border Lake Roosevelt, and lined them with red maples, Dutch elms and black locusts. Many houses look today as they did in 1942, when the dam was completed. The former dam headquarters is now the town hall. A dorm for bachelor engineers is the Four Winds Guest House. A self-guided tour takes visitors through the neighborhood. Other highlights are a 32-mile railroad tunnel that the government dug but never used, and a mountainous pile of gravel left over from dam construction. Hardy visitors with sturdy boots can get a bird’s eye view of the town by climbing the Candy Point Trail, which rises 700 feet in three-quarters of a mile to Crown Point. Visitors with weaker legs and lungs can drive to the same overlook. Ask any local for directions.