I am certain that I have heard more “Dam” jokes today than any other time in my life. We are at Grand Coulee Dam and tour guides, drivers, visitor center staff, even video narrators all get in on it.

Besides all the bad jokes; there is a lot of concrete, holding back a lot of water, running lots of huge generators, and running mammoth pumps. Seems this dam, though huge, is not high enough to allow gravity feed irrigation to the rest of the state.  To get the level high enough they would have flooded far into to Canada, a nono at the time.  So, they pump water out of Roosevelt Lake up another 280 feet or so into an irrigation reservoir (Banks Lake) then it travels though canals and ditches to 100,000’s of acres of crop land.  We saw the pump room on our tour.  It’s all pretty remarkable.

Of course there is the downside. This dam single handedly drowned out over 135 miles of wild Columbia river, its habitat and natural wildlife.  It is another place that would have been amazing to see untamed.

Not at all what I expected.

We found good seats on the river side bleachers with a great view of the face of the dam. An imposing voice boomed, “take your seats please, the laser light show will begin in just a few minutes”.  In the twilight, the surface of the dam begins to brighten.  The giant spillway rocker gates are cracked open to release just enough water to create a very cool white “screen” across the entire spillway surface for the light show.  Ok, what’s next?  A beaver.  Yep.

Disco Ball Beaver

He is sort of their mascot.  “After all, who knows more about dams than a beaver?”  This laser light image pops out of manhole covers.  Dances.  Carries signs and narrates a fun series of Coulee Tunes cartoons.  It is sort of like the old pre-movie cartoons at the theatre.

Then there is the main feature. The Many Voices of the Columbia.  It describes birth of this geology, use of the lands by first nation’s peoples, use by white explorers and settlers and finally the building of the dam.  Definitely a propaganda film  but well done and fun to watch.