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| The dam site before construction |
Now the world holds seven wonders
That the travellers always tell
Some gardens and some towers,
I guess you know them well
But now the greatest wonder
Is in Uncle Sam's fair land
It's the big Columbia River
And the big Grand Coulee Dam
She heads up the Canadian Rockies
Where the rippling waters glide
Comes a-roaring down the canyon
For to meet that salty tide
Of the big Pacific Ocean
Where the sun sinks in the west
In the big Grand Coulee country
In the land I love the best
In the misty crystal glitter
Of the wild and windward spray
Men have fought the pounding waters
And met a watery grave
Why, she tore their boats to splinters
But she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam
Would cross that wild and wasted stream
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| During construction |
Now Uncle Sam took up the challenge
In the year of thirty three
For the farmer and the factory
And all of you and me
He said, "Roll along Columbia,
You can roll down to the sea
But river, while you're rambling
You can do some work for me."
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| A year's worth of logs from one camp heads down river in 1906 |
In the misty crystal glitter
Of the wild and windward spray
Men have fought the pounding waters
And met a watery grave
Why, she tore their boats to splinters
But she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam
Would cross that wild and wasted stream
Now from Washington and Oregon
You can hear the factories hum
Making chrome and making manganese
And white aluminum
Now the roar of the Flying Fortress
For to fight for Uncle Sam
On the howling King Columbia
By the big Grand Coulee Dam
In the misty crystal glitter
Of the wild and windward spray
Men have fought the pounding waters
And met a watery grave
Why, she tore their boats to splinters
But she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam
Would cross that wild and wasted stream
Now the world holds seven wonders
That the travellers always tell
Some gardens and some towers,
Why, I guess you know them well
But now the greatest wonder
Is in Uncle Sam's fair land
It's the big Columbia River
And the big Grand Coulee Dam.
Woodie Guthrie 1941
 |
| The dam now |
"Replication and accommodation drove Western Hemisphere expansion and settlement. Individuals who came to new land brought ideas about how to use it based on the place or places they left behind. They aimed to establish New England, New France, New Spain, or New Amsterdam. They wanted a fresh start but, plagued by the twin diseases of culture shock and homesickness, also worked to recreate familiar surroundings. None of the participants lost their desire to replicate what was familiar to them. Those in the West have always wanted to make it as much like the East as possible, while at the same time keeping it vigorous and untainted. The result is a West that is both a continuation and a place unique. Look at the people who came, the ideas they carried with them, and the changes the new environment and association with different peoples forced them to make, and you can understand American history."
Grand Coulee: harnessing a dream, by Paul C. Pitzer, Pullman, Wash.: Washington State University Press, 1994.
See http://content.lib.washington.edu/grandcouleeweb/book-excerpt.html
