New exhibit tells the story of Grand Coulee Dam

Life in the Inland Northwest is linked to the Grand Coulee Dam.

Whether you turn on a light switch and partake of its legacy of hydroelectric production or eat the food produced from the land reclaimed through the use of its irrigation water or relax in the waters of Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake or Banks Lake, the construction of the great Grand Coulee Dam permanently altered the landscape of Eastern Washington.

The project started in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and that work fed and clothed families in desperate need of help. By the time it was finished 1941, it was the largest manmade structure ever built.

Many considered it the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Folk singer Woody Guthrie put the dam in a class by itself, however. In his song “Grand Coulee Dam,” he wrote

“Well, the world has seven wonders that the trav’lers always tell,

Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well.

But the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam’s fair land,

It’s the big Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam.”

A new exhibit, offered in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and now on display at the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, 12114 E. Sprague Ave., celebrates Grand Coulee Dam and its connections to Spokane.

The original goal in building Grand Coulee Dam was to provide irrigation for the desert of Central Washington and across a great expanse of the Pacific Northwest. However, with the beginning of World War II came an ever-increasing demand for electricity to power both the aluminum smelting operations that provided the materials required to build the airplanes needed to fight and to power plutonium production at the Hanford site as part of the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bombs.

The project was built by the Bureau of Reclamation, with construction subcontracted to Henry J. Kaiser, whose Pacific Northwest legacy is expansive in its own right.

The dam itself is an awesome sight to behold. More than a mile wide, it’s twice as tall as Niagara Falls and is made up of 12 million cubic yards of concrete. The reservoir created by the dam, Lake Roosevelt, contains nine million acre feet of water and stretches 150 miles to the Canadian border.

Inside the dam there are 24 generators that provide up to 6.5 million kilowatts of power while water from the dam irrigates more than a half million acres, an expanse that stretches from Coulee City all the way to Pasco.

The exhibit runs through April 30. The museum is open by appointment; its winter hours are Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.