Category Archives: How It’s Done

Here’s your visitor guide

A boat on Banks Lake is tiny against the massive wall of the Upper Grand Coulee.

Here’s our 2023-24 Visitors’ Guide, the print version in online form. Use this to keep it “in your pocket” for quick reference

OR

Pick up the actual print version just about anywhere in town, at the Visitor Center at Grand Coulee Dam or at several visitor centers around the state.

How to fish from the shore of Lake Roosevelt in winter

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has produced another excellent, short video on fishing Lake Roosevelt, this on one shore fishing in the winter.

Filmed in January, the video includes several tips and how-to advice on fishing the lake, which is stocked with 750,000 rainbow trout a year.

Rather fish from your boat? Check out the latest boat ramp and lake level information.

The inside story today at the dam

Electrical switchyard
One of the switchyards used in directing the electricity produced at Grand Coulee Dam onto the grid that powers several states.

If you’d like to glimpse the inside story of one aspect of the mission of Grand Coulee Dam, this is a good video.

The dam was originally conceived to provide irrigation to more than a million acres of potential farmland in the Columbia basin, but these days most people think of it as a huge electricity producer.

It is that, but this video, produced by the Bureau of Reclamation as a tool to help potential recruits, also provides a good overview of the basics with some spectacular footage. Watching it will help you appreciate what you see when you visit in person.

Grand Coulee Dam is the largest electrical production facility of any kind, in terms of capacity, in North America. But it doesn’t just happen magically. These folks make it happen. Watch: