A grand celebration: Enjoying America’s bigness on the 250th

A nation turning 250 is a glorious thing, malcontents determined to shame and berate us out of enjoying it notwithstanding. As for myself, since seeing the bicentennial quarters as a child, back when they were the only unique quarters in circulation, I have been anticipating this milestone.

That being the case, I booked a room in January to take my family to the Grand Coulee Dam, which hosts an annual Festival of America on the Fourth of July. While it is less famous than the much smaller Hoover Dam, due to its remote location, this marvel of engineering deserves its place among America’s greatest achievements and is a glorious reminder that we have always been a people who can overcome any challenge if we choose to do so. Further, out among the good honest folks of the interior, one can almost entirely forget the constant harangues that dominate political discourse and enjoy camaraderie with fellow citizens celebrating their country.

The drive to Grand Coulee is only a few hours from our home south of Spokane, and we decided to take the most direct route over scenic byways, which show a diverse array of northwestern landscapes. Starting from the rolling hills of the fertile Palouse region where we live, one passes through stands of forest, high desert, and what would be most striking to a visitor, the Channeled Scablands, a unique geological feature created when ice age mega-floods ripped away the soil and left unusual rock formations in its place. It was similar ice age geological forces that made the Grand Coulee itself a large dry riverbed, some of which the dam has now filled for irrigation. Most importantly, for dams, are the region’s dramatic gorges, which made the entire Columbia Basin Project viable. Living here, one gets used to seeing them, but when the Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the region (though not to the site of the Grand Coulee Dam itself), this would have been stunning.

Dropping down to reach this destination, the first thing one sees is Lake Roosevelt, a slow and wide reservoir interned behind the dam that stretches 130 miles to the Canada border. From a distance above, the dam resembles a mere bridge. As you continue, you can see the dam from below, which is just shy of a mile wide, stretching across the great gorge. 330 feet of the 550-foot structure stick out of the water, which is also 550-feet thick at its base. The lower water release holes, which look quite small to the naked eye, are in fact big enough to drive a standard truck through. No picture can do it justice.

(Photo © Jeff Cummings, created for the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce)

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The journalist John Gunther, who visited the site in 1945 while writing his book Inside U.S.A., called it the “largest single structure built by man,” and cited one of his contemporaries who estimated it weighed three times as much as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Bureau of Reclamation, which built and manages the dam, today gives the comparison that its almost 12 million cubic yards of concrete could build a sidewalk that wrapped around the equator twice. In most statistics besides height, including power generation, the Grand Coulee Dam is three to four times greater than the Hoover Dam. To this day, a 230-foot-high pile of sand from the excavations remains in Coulee Dam, billed “The World’s Largest Sandbox,” which was moved there by a two-mile conveyor belt, then the world’s longest. For history or geology fans, the dam’s museum has much of interest, including the wheelchair President Franklin D. Roosevelt used when he visited the construction site. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was more skeptical of the project, remarked that whoever convinced him this would work must have been a great salesman.

But it did work, though the project was and remains controversial. There were people who didn’t believe a project so ambitious could be completed. There were also concerns about price and other human and environmental costs. However, one main objection was disproven almost immediately: the claim that the sparsely populated region lacked the power demand to make use of the electricity. As if by fate, the dam was completed in 1942 and became a cornerstone of the American industrial might, which won World War II. A light metals industry sprang up nearby instantly, with metal and power going to Kaiser shipyards and Boeing plants in western Washington, the latter ultimately producing 30,000 combat planes. Beyond that, it was this power that went to the Hanford project to the south, where plutonium was refined to create the atomic bomb. Since then, power production at Grand Coulee has been massively increased, with new generation plants, and it produces around 10 times as much as it did during the war, or enough to power roughly 2 million modern homes. The water has also been turned to irrigation use, greening some 670,000 acres of desert that became some of the nation’s most valuable agricultural land.

All of this power and war-making stands in stark contrast to the three quiet and peaceful towns of around 1,000 people each that surround the dam: Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam, and Electric City. We stayed at the only motel in clear view of the dam in the lower river gorge, beneath a mass of electric lines that carry energy out to the eight states it serves, plus Canada. In this small town that still, in many ways, feels like it is midcentury, the motel even had real room keys. Though a lot of people from all over spend their Fourth of July at the dam every year, it maintains the feel of a local, small-town event. It turned out to be the right speed for our family of two young children, and our 7-year-old could develop some independence of her own, running around without our eyes on her every second. The entire crowd was very friendly, and people working the event seemed like they wanted to be there. Despite what you might see on TV, partisan politics were entirely forgotten for the festival among this segment of the public, with attendees brought together by patriotism and an appreciation for America’s beauty, both man-made and natural.

I had been to this event once before, with a friend’s family as a boy. Looking back, I realize it must have been the summer of 2001. At the time, as kids of that era, we were able to run all over, climb down the rocks from the park, and get into the icy water just below the dam, which comes from well below the surface of the lake above. It was my best Fourth of July memory from growing up, which is why I wanted to bring my own family. Of course, a couple of months later, everything in America changed. It seems to have gone unnoticed that at 250 years old, 9/11 is now one-tenth of our young country’s life ago. Following that event, federal dams had strong security measures for more than a decade. While they were all theoretically rescinded, the fencing keeping you in the park, once the site of the government work camp, never came down. As near as I can tell, this is not because of any security threat, but due to the mundane concerns about liability that have created a creeping tyranny of fencing across America. Besides that, the event has hardly changed in a country where few things feel the same.

As night approached, the park rapidly filled with people coming to view what was billed as the dam’s biggest fireworks show ever. First, though, there is a laser show which runs at 10 p.m. every night all summer. This was also, as far as I can remember, unchanged. At night, they let water down over the dam in a majestic procession of opened spillways, creating an enormous screen of reflecting white water. The story of the river’s history and the dam’s creation is told, and, as well as being entertaining, it is quite educational if you can hear it over the roaring water.

AS AMERICA CELEBRATES 250 YEARS, THE LEFT SENDS ITS REGRETS

Having seen that laser show the night before, we went back to our hotel to watch the fireworks and enjoy a fancy local American Methode Champenoise​ wine with the delightfully gauche, and entirely appropriate, name, “Do Epic S***.” The fireworks started from their noble perch atop the dam, and then after a few short minutes, suddenly stopped. As we discussed what happened, knowing this could not be the show, the public began to stream out, seemingly having lost faith that rapidly. After some concern and agitation, we got word that there were technical problems you could only hear about if you were near the speakers. After perhaps 20 minutes, a grand fireworks show began in rapid succession, one in which no one could be disappointed.

Reflecting, this is a kind of portrait of the country. Americans are an ambitious people who want things ever bigger, and in pursuit of such, we may get ahead of ourselves, and it doesn’t always work out immediately. However, it is those who lack faith in America who miss out, while those who stick it out through the hard times and questionable moments are left to get the rewards. It’s easy to be discouraged and imagine that we can’t build things like the Grand Coulee Dam anymore, but the truth is that Americans can still ultimately achieve anything we properly set our minds to.

Brad Pearce writes the Wayward Rabbler on Substack and is also a regular contributor to the American Conservative and the Libertarian Institute. He lives in eastern Washington with his wife and two children.