About
Coulee Dam
Welcome to the home page for Grand Coulee Dam
Grand Coulee Dam was the key to the development of power on the Columbia River - the greatest potential source of hydro-electric energy among the rivers of America. Original plans contemplated 10 dams on the Columbia River between the Canadian border and the mouth of the river.
Grand Coulee Dam forms Lake Roosevelt, extending upstream 151 miles to the Canadian Border. It has a shore line of 600 miles and a surface area of 82,000 acres. In 1970, Congress designated the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.
Grand Coulee provides irrigation water for apprxoimately 600,000 acres in the Columbia Basin Project and generated 19,182,092,957 KWh of power in 2003. In addition to its irrigation and power functions, Grand Coulee Dam is a potent factor in controlling the floods on the Columbia River.
In its generally southwesterly course from Canada to the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River in central Washington forms a half loop known as the Big Bend, between the mouths of the Spokane and Snake Rivers. During one of the ice ages, a glacier extended across the present river channel, diverting the flow across the open eastern side of the Big Bend loop. By the time the ice age had passed, this diverted water had eroded what is now known as the Grand Coulee, so that when the river returned to its present channel the Coulee was left as a potential high-elevation irrigation storage reservoir - waiting only to be sealed at each end and filled with water. The Grand Coulee Dam and powerplant are located in the present Columbia River Channel adjacent to the upper end of the Grand Coulee, about 90 miles northwest of Spokane, Wash.
When it was announced that a great dam would be constructed on the Columbia River, hundreds of men, many with families, traveled to the Columbia Basin in search of jobs and relief from the economic devastation of the depression. There was a great deal of interest in Grand Coulee Dam. The opening of bids for construction, on June 18, 1934, took place at the Spokane Civic Building in front of a crowd of nearly 1,000 and was broadcast over the radio to much of the Pacific Northwest. Grand Coulee Dam was completed in 1942.
Read the History of the Columbia Basin Project and Grand Coulee Dam
Explore Grand Coulee Dam on Reclamation's Dataweb.