Grand Coulee

Grand Coulee Irrigation Pumps

It was only a few miles to the Washington border, but almost immediately the landscape changed from mountains to wheat fields. We took the tour of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest electrical facility in the US. It can power the cities of Seattle and Portland. However, it was designed primarily to provide irrigation water to Eastern Washington, an area as large as Rhode Island. We saw the 12 pumps that take the water out of the Columbia River and pump it up 280 feet into Banks lake from which it is distributed. These pumps can move 1 billion gallons a day. Two of the pumps were down for their 25 year maintenance. Only 2% of the flow from the Columbia is removed here for irrigation.

We continued on to Dry Falls State Park. Here we met an enthusiastic ranger, who was happy to share with us the story of this place. After the last glacier period, the glacier dammed up the water creating Lake Missoula, which was the size of Lake Erie and Ontario combined. The water caused a massive flood when it broke through the ice dam. Here was a 3 1/2 mile long water fall falling 350 feet and tearing away the basalt rock flowing at 60 mph. Eventually all this water found a path to the ocean , meanwhile it created these coulee formations.

Lake Missoula and the Coulees