Grand Coulee Dam, Washington USA - Two Minute Travel by Continental Drifters

Описание: Have you ever looked at a dam and wondered how it works? What’s going on behind those giant walls?

Grand Coulee Dam is known as North America’s Largest Masonry Structure, so we were curious about it. Since the dam offers tours we decided to take a look.

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Built between 1933 and 1975 the dam is 550 feet tall, from the 500 foot wide polished granite base,

The dam is so big it’s got a paved two lane road across the top. The road is closed to traffic, but tours are given special access.

On one side of the top of the dam you look into Lake Roosevelt. it’s actually is actually the Columbia River backed up behind Grand Coulee Dam. Those giant grates? They keep trees, logs and large pieces of debris from getting sucked in and jamming up the works inside.

Speaking of inside, after heading down hundreds of feet in a fast moving elevator, you get to the old generators. Still churning out massive amount of power these babies are the originals, put in when the dam was built. More recently a third power house was built which generates much more power, and is way more efficient.

When you include the that third power house, Grand Coulee Dam is now almost 1 mile long.

Back on top, and to the other side of that paved road… get your stomach ready for this… you can look straight down the face of the dam to the much shallower river below.

 The Grand Coulee Dam sits deep in the Columbia River Gorge of North
Central Washington. It is located about 1.5 h drive west of Spokane, nearly 2 hours drive South of Canada's border, and about 4 has drive east of Seattle.