American Experience: Grand Coulee Dam DVD - AV Item,When Grand Coulee Dam was being built during the depths of the Great Depression, everything about it - generators, powerhouses, pumps - was the biggest in the world. The Bureau of Reclamation has temporarily closed public visitation to the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center in support of the recommended guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Groundbreaking ceremonies took place on July 16, 1933, just days before funds were approved for another dam on the Columbia River--the huge Bonneville Dam, to be built downstream by the Corps of Engineers. shipping: + $2.99 shipping . On October 4, 1941--just two months before America’s entry into World War II, Coulee’s first generator was placed into service. By April 1939, more than 5,500 men were employed placing concrete. The contract for a low dam, awarded on July 13, 1934, went to the Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier Company (MWAK). They quickly set about designing and building Mason City, touted as the world’s first “all electric city,” to house workers. In September 1939, CBI placed 400,000 cubic yards of concrete, breaking a previous record set by MWAK.
The selected design, William Joe Simonds writes, was a 3,000-foot-long, U-shaped, steel pile coffer dam, one for the river’s west side and one for the east, containing interlocking cells that were filled with rock and earth from the excavations. Roosevelt launched Federal program after Federal program in an attempt to spur the economy by “priming the pump” and providing jobs for out-of-work Americans. Welcome to Eastern Washington State’s Recreation Capital – the Grand Coulee Dam Area, presented by the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce. That summer MWAK constructed two cement plants, one for each side of the dam, capable of producing 640 cubic yards (or 129,338 gallons) of concrete every hour. Many other dams would follow on the Columbia, which traces its headwaters to the Canadian Rockies. Shop, dine and stay in the famous Grand Coulee Dam Area for a truly memorable experience.
So urgent were wartime needs that Reclamation looked to the unfinished Shasta Dam in California for help. The contract for the first three, 108,000 kilowatt generators at Grand Coulee went to Westinghouse at a cost of about $2.6 million each.
Twenty to 30-foot deep grout holes also were drilled; the grout pumped in to provide a secure seal beneath the dam. Other towns sprang up, including Engineers Town, built by Reclamation to house its engineers, and the rowdy Grand Coulee, known for its taverns and gambling halls.From the town of Odair, rails extended to the construction site, where MWAK used an innovative conveyor belt, rather than trucks, to carry the tons of rock and earth excavated each day.
04:00 PM Dec-05-20 Meanwhile, at Reclamation’s experimental laboratory in Colorado, engineers tested different plans for diverting the Columbia so construction could begin.
Measuring 18 feet in diameter, Grand Coulee’s original 18 penstocks were so huge they had to be fabricated onsite, in a building as long as a football field. This Thursday, October 24, we’ll be at La Presa Restaurant at noon and…Chamber in Review We meet each Thursday at a local restaurant for our Chamber no-host lunches.
Proponents of this latter “gravity plan” argued that the hydroelectricity generated from the dam was not needed. Grand Coulee still ranks among the largest dams and top producers of electricity in the world, although it has been eclipsed in recent years by dams such China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, which has been criticized for its impacts on people and the ecosystem. The achievement is even more remarkable considering that in 1940, as Simonds notes, the region had no aluminum-manufacturing capabilities.With the end of World War II, the economy in the Northwest continued to boom.
The dam’s second and third generators were in service by April 7, 1942, and completion of the next six units was given high priority.