GRAND COULEE DAM, WASHINGTON

Sept. 3rd.

Today we went and saw the Grand Coulee Dam, Washington. Construction on Grand Coulee Dam was started in 1933. Its construction was authorized during Franklin Roosevelt’s time as president. The dam is nearly one mile across the top. Grand Coulee is one of the largest concrete structures in the world, containing almost 12 million cubic years of concrete. The dam has three important functions: irrigation, power production, and flood control. Electricity energy was not the first function when it was created; however, it is now the most important job. When they built the dam Lake Roosevelt (a reservoir) was created. This lake extends 151 miles upstream to the Canadian border. It has a shoreline of 660 miles.

APPLE, PEACH, AND GRAPES
After viewing both sides of the dam we drove on a scenic byway on our way to Alta Lake State Park. This drive was through the Coleville Nation Indian Reservation and along the Columbia River and Okanagan River. The valley is filled with apple and peach orchards and vineyards. What a beautiful site to see the green trees and vines along with the tall coulees of the area.

We were driving through the Coulee Corridor there were coulees and canyons throughout the landscape. This area was shaped by many natural forces, mountain building, subsidence to seas, volcanic activity, and one of the greatest ice age floods on earth. Two principal agents of landscape change standout, fire and ice. Millions of years ago, multiple lava floods of basalt from volcanic activity covered the region to depths of more than 1,000 feet. The vertical coulee walls show layers of up to seven volcanic flows occurring over the Miocene period. Subsequent catastrophic Ice Age floods sweeping down from Lake Missoula during the Pleistocene epoch carved and scoured the land, leaving behind a strange array of basalt rock formations, cliffs, caves, coulees, and channeled scablands.

Alta Lake State Park was small and sloping so we traveled further south to Chelan, Washington, and stayed at a town park that was very nice. We decided to stay in Everett, Washington, on our way to Olympic National Park.