Can you drive across the Grand Coulee Dam?

You can access the park by taking highway 174 across the dam or by taking Highway 155. For those visiting Grand Coulee Dam by car, take Highway 2 to Electric City, turn right onto SR-155, and drive over the dam. After crossing the dam you will come to a T intersection.



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If the dam could not hold back an excessive amount of water, the water would come over the top of the dam and potentially flood areas downstream, including cities.

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A concrete gravity dam, Grand Coulee took eight years to build, employed thousands of men during the Great Depression and, when completed in 1942, provided the enormous electrical power necessary to make aluminum, so essential for World War II production of planes and ships.

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Grand Coulee (map) is the largest dam in the Columbia River Basin and one of the largest in the world. Everything about the dam is large: it is 550 feet (167.6 meters) tall, measured from its foundation in solid granite, or approximately 350 feet (106.7 meters) from the downstream river surface to the top of the dam.

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The construction of a series of dams on the Columbia River, including the Grand Coulee Dam, has limited the available riverine salmon habitat to 13% of the river. Fall chinook salmon currently use only 85 km of the 2,000 km river as breeding grounds.

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Lake Roosevelt is the name of the Columbia River reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam. It is named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who as president authorized the initial construction of the dam and remained its champion as long as he was president.

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The Oregonian called it man's greatest creation that turned the mighty Columbia River into a slave of man. A book published five years later called it the eighth wonder of the world. Even folk legend Woody Guthrie, in Roll On, Columbia, Roll On, sang that Grand Coulee was the mightiest thing ever built by a ...

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Grand Coulee Dam is the largest hydropower producer in the United States, generating more than 21 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. That's enough power to supply about 2 million households with electricity for one year.

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A dam is defined as a barrier constructed to hold back water and raise its level, forming a reservoir used to generate electricity or as a water supply. The oldest dam in America is Old Oaken Bucket Pond Dam. It was built in 1640 and is located in Scituate, Massachusetts.

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