All language subtitles for Grand Coulee Dam 720p HDTV x264 PBS American Experience 2012 EN SUB

Tonight...

MAN:
Grand Coulee's going to be
the biggest thing on earth.

There just seems to be no end

of the good things
that can come out of the dam.

MAN:
It was an elixir
for the Great Depression;

it made the desert
into a garden;

and it was a bit
of cultural savagery

and environmental butchery.

"Grand Coulee Dam,"
on American Experience.

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NARRATOR:
It was called
"The Biggest Thing on Earth,"

a dam unlike any other,

a wall of concrete that dared
to tame the mighty Columbia.

WILLIAM LANG:
A river is the most
dynamic thing in nature.

To block a river
is the most audacious thing

a human being can do.

And when you block a river,
you create a new future.

There's no going back.

NARRATOR:
Its massive generators
would power entire cities,

and the water it captured
would make the desert bloom.

It came to embody
the promise of America

when many believed
their country's promises

had all been broken.

BLAINE HARDEN:
It was this idea
of manifest destiny,

of Americans asserting
their will

on the natural resources
of the country.

And people really
believed in that.

MARGARET O'MARA:
The Grand Coulee Dam
starts a process

of transforming the whole river
system into a working landscape

like never before.

The New Deal was a radical idea.

Roosevelt really redefined
what the balance is

between the individual good
and the collective good.

NARRATOR:
Its power would help win a war
and unite a nation,

but its construction would leave
a region bitterly divided.

STEVEN HAWLEY:
Who controls the water and the
natural resources of the West?

I think there is an attitude

amongst the managers
of the river,

and they simply said, "We stole
these rivers fair and square

and we're not giving them back,
not without a fight."

D.C. JACKSON:
It's supposed to be
for everyone.

It's easy to say that
it's a public resource.

But everyone has a different
vision of what they think

that public interest should be.

NARRATOR:
For some, Grand Coulee Dam

would be an engine
of growth and prosperity.

For others,
it would come to symbolize

heartbreak and betrayal.

In the end, it was
an outsized statement

of American power and prestige,

a monument to noble ideals
and unintended consequences.

RICHARD WHITE:
There is a way in which
people hate the dams

and are proud of the dams,

ways in which people imagine
a Columbia running free,

but they could not live without
the Columbia's electricity.

That river is our most profound
dreams for what we can become

and our deepest regrets
about what we've done.

We've woven them together

and we're never going to be able
to take them apart.

NARRATOR:
On a blisteringly hot day
in July of 1918,

a weathered Model T Ford
drove down First Avenue

in the dusty little town
of Ephrata, Washington,

and pulled up
in front of the offices

of a local lawyer named
William Clapp.

On the side of the car,

a small sign read
"The Wenatchee Daily World.

The World's Greatest
Daily Paper."

The car belonged to a restless
40-year-old editor and publisher

named Rufus Woods.

A part-time school teacher,
failed attorney

and veteran
of the Alaskan gold rush,

he had finally found his calling
at the helm

of eastern Washington's first
daily newspaper,

founded in 1905.

Woods had turned
the failing paper around

with a mix of shrewd business
acumen, a strong regional focus,

and a dash of showmanship.

Early subscribers received
a free set of dishes,

others free knives.

Papers were sometimes delivered
on horseback, and in one stunt,

Woods painted a pony of his
with zebra stripes

for extra publicity.

Three years after buying
the paper,

Woods had boosted circulation
by 600%.

PAUL PITZER:
Rufus Woods, he had a vision.

His vision was to create
something of what he called

"north central Washington."

He was in competition
with Spokane

on the east side of the state

and, of course, Seattle
on the west side of the state.

And he used to travel around
looking for stories.

NARRATOR:
The town fathers of Ephrata

gathered in Clapp's office
that day

were worried about the future
of their region,

tired of it being seen
as a desolate backwater

without big industries or farms.

Then, Billy started talking
about building a dam

on the Columbia River

at the mouth of what was called
the Grand Coulee.

HARDEN:
Grand Coulee is basically a big
ditch, a really big ditch.

And the thought was

that you could divert water
out of the river

up into that big ditch
and then, using gravity,

feed that water down across the
country where the soil was great

and all it needed was water.

LANG:
He sells it as a great location

because of this
wonderful landscape

that has been completely
scoured out by these floods

that ravaged the area
thousands of years ago.

And so it creates
these huge, dry coulees

and he sees the ability
to make these into reservoirs

to capture the water
from a dammed Columbia.

And this one spot
makes it possible

to dam the river up
for miles and miles and miles.

NARRATOR:
The plan the boosters hatched
called for water

to be pumped out of the lake
formed by the dam,

up over the rim
of the river's canyon,

and into the Grand Coulee,

which would become
a new, huge reservoir.

From there, the water
could be fed by gravity

down a sloping plateau
to the south,

irrigating more than a million
new acres of land.

WILFRED WOODS:
In 1918, Billy Clapp told my
father about this great idea

of a Grand Coulee Dam.

Well, it was, really, in 1918,

a fantastic dream to build
a project of that size.

NARRATOR:
That summer of 1918,
as Rufus Woods listened

to Billy Clapp and his friends
lay out their plans,

Woods began pacing around
the lawyer's small office,

unable to control
his excitement.

No longer would his region
have to suffer

as an isolated backwater.

The hydro-power
from this miraculous dam

would transform their region
at last.

HAWLEY:
It became almost an obsession,

this idea that if they could
just control this river,

they could have a kind
of Garden of Eden.

You know, the inland empire
with crops, orchards, farms,

a kind of Shangri-La

of agricultural
and industrial delights

that would build
a new civilization.

HARDEN:
Rufus Woods pitched the dam

as a scientific marvel,

the answer to all their prayers
about the future,

as something that God himself
wanted done

and he just needed to get the
federal government to come in,

pay for it, and let the locals
run with the advantages

that would come from it.

And that's the way he sold it.

NARRATOR:
The boosters called themselves
the Dam University,

and although they had
no technical know-how

and no powerful political
connections,

they shared a dream
about Grand Coulee Dam

and the waters it would unleash
to make their desert bloom.

If they could find the money
to build it,

they might at last conquer
the wild Columbia.

WOODS:
Oh my, what a stream.

My dad called it
the imperial Columbia.

And it's true,
it's a tremendous stream.

JACKSON:
It's just one huge,
free-flowing river.

It's the largest in the West,
much larger than the Colorado,

just a tremendous waterway.

LANG:
We've got an enormous
amount of water

because of it catching
all of the Pacific snow and rain

and all of this water
falling in about 600 miles.

WHITE:
This river, quite literally,

it'll eat through
mountain ranges.

It will eat through
the Cascades,

This is an incredibly powerful
natural force,

and it will drop with a power
that is almost beyond belief.

NARRATOR:
It was the Columbia's raw energy

that Rufus Woods imagined
Grand Coulee would convert

to a productive use.

Throughout the 1920s, however,

he often found his crusade for
the dam falling on deaf ears.

LANG:
Rufus Woods recognized
that he had to find a way

to get the government to
actually invest in something

as big as he had in mind.

And what he had
in mind was huge.

It was bigger than anything else
that had been built.

PITZER:
The early promoters
hoped that a large dam

would generate a great amount
of power which could be sold,

and the money from the selling
of the power

would be used to support
the irrigation.

NARRATOR:
Stacked up against Woods

and the other members
of the Dam University

were groups like the powerful
Spokane Chamber of Commerce

and private utilities such as
Washington Water Power Company

and Puget Sound Power and Light,
all of which had their own

hydroelectric and irrigation
projects and their own agendas.

JACKSON:
Private power companies
see this as competition.

They don't want this.

And the big argument against it
is that it just doesn't make

financial sense.

HARDEN:
At the time
that he was proposing

building the biggest dam
in the history of the world,

there were only a couple
hundred thousand people

living in eastern Washington.

WHITE:
As critics of the project say
about the power,

"Who's the electricity for?

"Is it for jackrabbits?

There's nobody out there
to consume it."

And they're right.

WOODS:
My dad was fighting the power
company in Spokane

all this time.

It was a long, long battle.

And it was a classic case of the
little guys against the big guys

and no money against big money.

There were national magazines
writing big exposés

about the white elephant
in the desert

as well as a lot of Republican
legislators in Congress

who were fulminating
against the use

of public funds for that dam.

NARRATOR:
The nation, it seemed, wasn't
ready for Grand Coulee Dam.

Then, in 1929,
the stock market crashed,

plunging the country
into depression.

Scorching winds turned the
drought-ravaged western prairie

into a dust bowl,

which actually brightened the
prospects for Grand Coulee Dam.

The economic crisis
brought a renewed focus

on large irrigation projects
and a new president into office.

As a lifelong Republican,

Rufus Woods had opposed
Franklin Roosevelt's election,

but during FDR's frenetic
first months in office,

Woods came to appreciate
his call for bold action.

The idea for the dam
was floating around

in Washington for years.

The Army Corps of Engineers
had written a report

about how to dam the river
all the way up and down.

Roosevelt was desperately
searching

for shovel-ready projects

that could employ lots of people
and have long-term use.

The dam made
a lot of sense then.

JACKSON:
Roosevelt put himself
on the side

of these huge resources
like the Columbia River.

And so the stake for him
was going up against

the plutocrats of Wall Street

that controlled
the private power industry.

So he had a real vested interest

in developing these large
hydroelectric power dams

as a way of demonstrating
the importance of public power.

And the Columbia offered

one of the great opportunities
for that.

NARRATOR:
In mid-June of 1933,

with the nationwide unemployment
rate at 25%,

Congress approved
one of Roosevelt's

most ambitious programs:
the Public Works Administration.

The president was authorized
to spend, at his discretion,

up to $3.3 billion
on new infrastructure projects

around the country.

The Bureau of Reclamation,

the huge federal builder
of water projects in the West,

came up with a plan for
the entire dam and reservoir

at a cost of $181 million.

FDR was determined
to get it off the ground,

but was unable to pay for
the entire project all at once,

so on July 26, he approved
$63 million in start-up funds

for the Grand Coulee Dam.

JACKSON:
Once you commit a small amount,
small being $63 million,

it's going to be much harder
to sort of pull the plug on it.

You commit a sizable amount,
but not the total,

to get the project going,
with the idea that down the road

you would be able
to bring it to completion.

NARRATOR:
Half of the dam was to be built

on the Colville Indian
Reservation,

home to a confederation
of 12 Northwestern tribes,

including the Chief Joseph band
of the Nez Perce,

which had fought a famous war

against the United States
in 1877.

HARDEN:
In the years before
the dam construction began,

some lawmakers said,

"How are we going
to compensate the Indians?"

because, you know, half
of the dam's on their land.

And some grudging consideration
was given to this idea,

and some promises were made.

COLLEEN CAWSTON:
I've heard that what was implied
we would receive

is the ability
to irrigate our land

and electricity at a rate that
would be much more affordable.

NARRATOR:
On July 16, 1933,
a group of dignitaries,

including Washington governor
Clarence Martin

and Jim James, chief
of the San Poil Indians

from the Colville reservation,

gathered on the banks
of the Columbia

to mark the start
of construction.

With Chief James holding it,

the governor drove in
the first stake,

inaugurating what would become
the largest irrigation

and hydroelectric project
in the country.

To realize its Olympian goals,

Grand Coulee's vast reservoir

would inundate
Indian communities,

submerge sacred fishing spspsps
and ancestral burial grounds,

and erect an impenetrable
barrier,

denying salmon access

to their network of spawning
grounds in the upper Columbia.

But none of that mattered
during the dark days of 1933.

There was little consideration
of the extraordinary changes

that Grand Coulee would have
on America's wildest stream--

on its rapids and waterfalls,
its fish

and the Native peoples whose
world revolved around it.

Rufus Woods and FDR's engineers
believed

that they could achieve miracles
with the Columbia.

And they were ready to begin.

NARRATOR:
By July of 1933, thousands
of hungry, desperate men

had flooded into eastern
Washington, lured by the promise

that Grand Coulee Dam would
create as many as 100,000 jobs.

The Wenatchee World
urged the laborers

to wait and file applications
with the Bureau of Reclamation,

but the men came anyway.

HARDEN:
People came up
to the dam, working men,

many of whom had ridden boxcars
from other parts of the country.

They slept in their cars.

They slept in the street.

They slept in caves
near the town.

They slept in the boxes that
dance hall pianos came in.

ED KERN:
Well, see, the Depression
was so bad, you know,

I was just out of high school.

I was still 19 years old.

And, well, what to do?

I walked down there, hey,

there's a whole block of people
waiting ahead of me, see,

trying to get on.

So I just waited
and waited and waited,

and finally my turn came.

He looks at me, he says,
"What can you do?

Are you a carpenter?"
"No."

"Are you a welder?"
"No."

"Trade?"
"No."

"Well, then, we got nothing
for you but labor."

That's when he put me down
in the rock gang.

He said, "It's going to be
hard, hard work,"

and he proved it to me.

NARRATOR:
On August 4, 1934, shortly
after construction began,

the Grand Coulee Dam site
received a surprising visitor.

HARDEN:
Roosevelt showed up,
which was completely unexpected

for the president
of the United States

to come to this godforsaken
corner of Washington state

when there was almost nothing
to show for it.

There was just dust and a hole
in the side of the river.

But he was there to talk about
what could be

and what this big project
represented

as part of the New Deal.

NARRATOR:
"We are going to see
with our own eyes

"electricity made so cheap

"that it will become
a standard article of use

not only for manufacturing
but for every home,"

proclaimed the president, with
his wife Eleanor looking on.

"I know that this
empty desert country

"is going to be filled with men,
women and children

"who will be making an honest
livelihood and doing their best

"to live up to the American
standard of living

and American standard
of citizenship."

HARDEN:
He talked about it as
sort of planting a seed

for a new future for that region
and for all of the West.

He looked on it
as the perfect symbol

of what he was trying to do.

"Look at all these men
who have jobs."

MARY HENNING:
We're in the midst
of this terrible depression

and, I mean, here you are
in this open field

and the cars and people
were just everywhere.

And they were so excited.

The idea that there was going
to be some employment,

there was going to be
something to do

and there was going to be
a paycheck.

Of course, we believed
in Franklin D. Roosevelt.

We just knew something wonderful
was going to happen.

NARRATOR:
By January of 1935,

Grand Coulee had finally become
the epic public works project

that its boosters had promised.

2,500 men worked on the dam,

with hundreds more
pouring in every month,

all employed by a conglomerate
of three companies

known by the acronym MWAK.

The company's superintendent

was a profane and hard-drinking
former ironworker

named Manley Harvey Slocum.

Partially crippled from
a gas explosion in his youth,

Slocum's gnarled hands
and stooped walk

hid an iron determination.

Known affectionately
by his men as Harvey,

he had proven himself
on dams in California

and in the jungles of Panama.

Though he never made it
past the eighth grade,

what Slocum knew how to do
was build.

JACKSON:
Harvey Slocum, he's the
superintendent at the dam site.

He's in charge of making
this thing work, you know,

on a day-to-day level.

He's a bit of a roustabout.

He would go on his binges,
he would have his drunks,

and that was, you know,
one of those things,

maybe you paid a price.

The workers,
they know how to work hard

or not work so hard
depending upon

whether they think
they're being treated fairly.

And having a superintendent

who is willing to go out on
a drunk every once in a while,

well, they might feel,

"Hey, there's a guy
who is on our side."

NARRATOR:
Slocum's biggest challenge was
to divert the flow of the river,

allowing workers
to dig out the mud

and expose the granite bedrock
on which the dam would rest.

To start, they needed
to build cofferdams--

temporary structures that
would keep the river at bay.

The first would run
along the west bank,

pushing a third of the river
out of the way,

and be anchored by a large piece
of the foundation

known as "Block 40."

Once the work on the west side
was complete,

another set of cofferdams
would extend out

from the east side
of the river,

diverting the flow over the
recently completed foundation.

JACKSON:
Once you've built the west side

and then you've got the
foundation that's stable enough

so that you can actually run
water over it,

then you go and you do it
on the other side.

And you use that big center
block, that...

that Block 40 as sort of the one
that connects the two together.

NARRATOR:
Complicating Slocum's
already daunting task

was the unpredictable power
of the Columbia.

In the spring,
the flow of the river

could sometimes surge
dramatically

as snowmelt and rain
would suddenly turn

the already muscular waterway
into a raging torrent.

The cofferdams
had to be built quickly

during low water months.

If not finished in time,

the spring runoff
would tear them to pieces.

Racing against the clock,

more than 1,200 men worked
in continuous shifts

driving huge interlocking
steel pilings

deep into the river's bottom
with steam hammers,

nervously watching for the river
to rise.

On March 23, 1935,
only 90 days after they started,

workers completed the west side
cofferdam.

And just in time.

That spring, the river peaked
at 32 feet

above its normal height.

The fragile cofferdams
held for a time,

until one night
they suddenly ruptured,

and 15,000 gallons a minute
came pouring in.

Roused from his bed,
still wearing his red pajamas,

Harvey Slocum rushed
to the dam site,

where his men threw anything
they could find into the river

to stop the leak:

mattresses, canvas, building
materials, even sagebrush.

Only more pilings
and a supply of bentonite,

a mineral that forms a thick
paste when mixed with water,

finally staunched the flow.

Against all odds,

the cofferdams had controlled
the surging Columbia,

but one critical issue
remained.

In 1933, FDR had been able
to commit

only a portion
of the dam's cost,

planning to get the rest
from Congress at a later date.

Now, in April of 1935,
the president's strategy

were derailed by the
U.S. Supreme Court,

which struck down his right
to spend money on dams

without Congressional approval.

JACKSON:
The Supreme Court,

which is rather conservative
at this point,

say to have FDR
allocate that money,

that's not going to be enough.

Congress is going to have
to specifically vote

to authorize these dams.

NARRATOR:
Joining the frantic lobbying
with characteristic gusto,

Rufus Woods had the World print
an eight-page special edition

that extolled the benefits
of the dam,

emblazoned with the banner
headline

"Two Million Wild Horses."

He made sure every member
of Congress received a copy.

The bill became law
on August 30, 1935.

With the river contained
by the cofferdams

and its political fate secured,

the dam could now rise
to its full height

and attempt to realize
its even loftier ambitions.

In December of that year,

as more than a thousand
spectators looked on,

Washington governor
Clarence Martin,

dressed in overalls
and rubber boots,

spread the first bucket
of concrete on the dam.

When the ceremony was complete,
a representative from MWAK

handed the governor a check
for 75 cents,

covering his wages for one hour
as a common laborer.

JACKSON:
You don't build this as one
single massive structure.

If you did that, you would get
all kinds of cracks.

Like sidewalks.

You know, concrete,
as it hardens,

it will naturally shrink
a little bit

and when you build a sidewalk,
you build those cracks into it.

At Grand Coulee,
they want to make sure

that they don't get cracking.

So you put it into
these discrete blocks,

about 50-foot square things,

which there are hundreds of them
that make up the dam.

NARRATOR:
Trestles built on top
of the foundation

brought concrete to the site,

and cranes lowered it down
in huge buckets

to be spread onto the dam.

Each new pour added
a five-foot layer.

72 hours later,
the process was repeated.

KERN:
We had to scrub the concrete,
like, with big wide brushes--

remember, concrete forms a scum.

And we had to brush it off.

And that's all we did,

we went from one block to the
other and kept cleaning up.

I want to tell you
that was a 24-hour job

and that contract had
to be done at a certain time

and they pushed it
and then pushed it.

They worked the death of us,
and no breaks.

No breaks at all.

You work till noon and
half an hour till night.

That was it.

I got so tired.

Wouldn't I like to have a break?

Oh, my, no, no.

There were no breaks
in those days.

NARRATOR:
By June of 1937, trestles
spanned the entire river.

The following February,
the foundation was complete

14 months ahead of schedule.

It would take millions
of cubic yards of concrete

to finish the job,
but what was being called

"the biggest thing on earth"
was at last taking shape.

NARRATOR:
For every thousand cubic yards
of concrete poured

or million dollars expended,
men paid with their lives.

They were knocked off the steep
walls of the foundation

and impaled on rebar,

drowned in the frigid waters
of the Columbia,

or in one horrible incident,

ripped apart
by a heavy conveyor belt.

By the time the foundation
was complete, 60 men had died.

In the midst of the Depression,

there were always new workers
to take their place.

And they kept on coming,

completely transforming
the area around the dam.

In the canyon
closest to the river,

the Bureau of Reclamation
had erected

two all-electric
model communities

for their skilled employees.

Called Engineers Town
and Mason City,

they boasted houses
with carefully tended lawns,

tree-lined streets,
flower growing contests,

and laws against drinking.

Up in the hills, beyond
the western edge of the canyon,

the mass of common laborers,
who were mostly single,

found what lodgings they could

in the raucous and ramshackle
boomtown of Grand Coulee,

which featured
a larger collection

of saloons and brothels
than any other town in the West.

The heart of this Sodom
and Gomorrah in the desert

was B Street,
a dilapidated collection

of false-fronted bars
and crib houses.

STEWART WHIPPLE:
We'd drive up there

and park close to the bars
and see all the activity.

Of course I was too young to get
into any of those places.

And then they had
great jazz music,

and we'd go through...
in the alley and listen--

the doors would be all open

because it'd be
100 degrees outside.

Music was going on
until 2:00 in the morning.

And then, of course,

we never parked in front
of the door of these bars

because the fights
would come out

and you didn't want anybody
landing on the hoods of the car.

LAWNEY REYES:
Lots of times, you'd be
walking down the street

and they had these swing doors
leading into the tavern

and you'd see two guys fighting,

come rolling out
onto the boardwalk.

And they'd be beating
each other to death.

And after they got through
doing that,

then they'd go back in
and drink some more.

HARDEN:
Trucks used to go up and down
the street

from the state health
department,

telling people to be quiet

and avoid activity
that spread social diseases.

NARRATOR:
Far from the din and depravity
of B Street,

the foundation of the dam
now spanned the river,

and in the summer of 1938,

the time had come to raise it
550 feet into the air.

Seeking to reduce costs,

MWAK accepted an offer to merge
with the huge conglomerate

run by the industrialist
Henry Kaiser

that had just finished building
Hoover Dam.

The new, even larger corporation

was called Consolidated Builders
Incorporated, or CBI.

Their bid of $34,400,442 won
the contract to finish the dam,

and over the next
year and a half,

the work went on
around the clock

as thousands of men per shift
swarmed over the structure.

Seen from a distance,

the dam seemed to pulsate
with energy,

as if it were alive.

Brightly illuminated

by thousands of floodlights
at night,

it was filled with surreal
shadows and otherworldly hues.

We had never seen
anything like this before.

We had never seen
so many people before.

But it was really
something to see.

They had at one time close to
8,000 workers, you know, here.

NARRATOR:
As the huge structure continued
to rise out of the river,

the massive penstocks
were installed

to funnel water
to the generators,

the cofferdams removed,
and the spillway and powerhouses

at the base of the dam
constructed.

Superintendent
Harvey Slocum never saw the dam

finally take shape.

During one particularly
hot spell in Grand Coulee,

he'd sent a government-paid
plumbing crew

to install sprinklers
on the roof

of his favorite B Street
brothel,

called the Swanee Rooms.

Grand Coulee's first
air conditioning system

cost Slocum his job,
but not his pride,

and he assailed a reporter
for the Wenatchee World

for the coverage
of his departure.

"You put in that paper of yours

that I was canned because
of ill health," he complained.

"Now you know damn well I got
canned because I was drunk."

Throughout the late 1930s,

work on the dam continued
at a remarkable pace.

But preparations
for filling the reservoir,

which would come to be known
as Lake Roosevelt,

were another story.

The lake began to fill
in March of 1940,

but the Bureau of Reclamation

got a late start
clearing the area,

and the construction of the dam
proceeded so quickly

that the rising waters behind it
caught everyone by surprise.

CAWSTON:
The people were given
very short notice

that the flood
was going to come.

And leadership called
the people together

and said the landscape was going
to change.

Many of our other
traditional foods

that we would gather near the
river would be now under river.

Many of the routes
that we would take

to go and harvest other foods
would be no more.

NARRATOR:
One particularly vexing problem

was what to do
with Indian grave sites

that were about to be submerged.

The bureau quickly hired
a Spokane funeral home

for the removal work,

but more and more sites
were discovered.

As they were identified,

scavengers plundered the graves
for the artifacts buried there.

With time running out, and just
over 1,300 graves moved so far,

the bureau simply ordered
the work stopped

and let the waters continue
their steady ascent.

REYES:
When a lot of them
saw the water rising,

they couldn't believe that
this is happening, you know.

And the water had stopped
flowing totally

and, of course, the Indians knew
that the river was dead then.

You know, and this is very hard
for the Indians to take

because it was a very beautiful
river.

You know, it was moving,
had a lot of power,

you know, you could hear it.

I can still hear it.

NARRATOR:
As painful as it was for Native
people to lose their land

and to suffer the desecration
of their cemeteries,

it was equally hard to endure
the loss of the salmon

that had defined their lives
for centuries.

Every summer, the Colville tribe
would gather

under the direction
of the salmon chief,

and in a time-honored ritual,

harvest the incredible bounty
of fish--

more than 300,000 annually.

The center of this activity

was a majestic series
of ledges in the river,

known as Kettle Falls.

Kettle Falls was a renowned
fishing village.

It had rocks protruding out
over the river

so that you could fish
in a traditional manner.

And it took great teaching.

So it was a skill
that was taught

from older generation
to younger generation.

NARRATOR:
The bureau had installed ladders

to get fish over the much lower
Bonneville Dam downstream

and considered a similar
approach at Grand Coulee,

but the dam was simply too high,
and the plans were put aside.

Bureau scientists hoped that
hatcheries would be able

to replenish the populations
of spawning salmon,

but the experiments failed
to live up to expectations.

Now, the rising waters
of the reservoir

were going to submerge
the falls forever.

For three days,
beginning on June 14, 1940,

a large crowd,
mostly Native people,

but also reporters, politicians
and local whites,

assembled at Kettle Falls.

The Indians called their
gathering the Ceremony of Tears.

But in some respects, it was
a surprisingly upbeat event.

There was a carnival,
an all-outdoor Indian dance

and boxing matches.

In a speech heralding the
arrival of cheap electricity,

Washington senator
Clarence Dill hoped

that "Indians
of future generations

will find the change made here
a great benefit to the people."

The Spokane Spokesman-Review
reported that, for their part,

the chiefs
"told of their sadness

"of the passing of the falls,
and some thought the government

should reimburse them
for their loss."

CAWSTON:
The loss of Kettle Falls

took away a part of the fabric
of who I am,

because no longer can I bring
my children to this place.

And no longer will they ever be
able to see a river turn red

from the backs of the salmon,

because that's how thick they
would run through Kettle Falls.

WHITE:
What'll happen is once those
dams start to back up,

these worlds where people
had fished,

where families had rites,

where there are certain rituals
that are exacted,

gradually as the water backs up,

those things vanish
under the water.

REYES:
You look at Lake Roosevelt
today, it's dead.

To me there's no beauty
whatsoever in Lake Roosevelt.

Some of the people I worked
with, you know,

they'd take a large boat
up Columbia

and spend a couple of weeks.

And they'd come back and tell me

they have never
seen so much beauty, you know.

And I told them, you don't
really know what beauty is,

you know,
because I am old enough

to have seen it
when it was alive.

NARRATOR:
One anthropologist,

who had lived on the Colville
reservation in the 1920s,

was stunned by the effect
of Grand Coulee Dam.

It was built with

"a ruthless disregard for
Indians as human beings,"

he wrote, creating
a blockaded river

that "drowned the culture
it had nourished."

HARDEN:
For years they didn't have
phone service.

They never got
the cheap electricity

that the white people
down where I lived got.

They were really, really
dispossessed of everything

and were always an afterthought.

It took the federal government
about a half-century

before they began
to even pay the Indians

for the use of their land.

They got a settlement
in the '90s,

gave them
more than $50 million

plus $15 million a year.

REYES:
It took us over 50 years to get
the first payment, you know.

Now we know
that we got screwed...

(laughs)

...because that electricity
is worth a lot more than that.

But we have no power to fight,
you know.

NARRATOR:
By the close of 1940,

Grand Coulee Dam
was nearing completion,

yet Roosevelt and his New Deal
supporters

were on the defensive.

FDR's attempts at balancing
the federal budget

in his second term
had pushed the nation

back into recession.

For the next two years,

unemployment once again soared
to as high as 19%.

All of the old arguments against
Grand Coulee were resurrected.

The dam was ridiculed as
an expensive boondoggle,

with no market
for its electricity.

Even less popular was the idea

of an ambitious
and costly irrigation scheme

whose benefits seemed
less tangible every day.

Representative Culkin called
the entire project

"a colossal un-economic folly
born of deceit

of the distinguished occupant
of the White House."

To date, the dam had dislocated
the Colville Indians,

devastated the Columbia's
salmon, and little else.

Seventy-two men had died
on the project.

It appeared as though
the critics

of the "white elephant
in the desert"

might have been right after all.

March 22, 1941,
marked the formal dedication

of Grand Coulee Dam.

Close to 8,000 people watched
from the hills

as the band from Grand Coulee
High School led a parade

before the official start of
two small in-house generators.

Speeches were made,
and a congratulatory telegram

from Roosevelt's interior
secretary hailed the dam

as "the greatest single
structure man has built."

HARDEN:
One of the ways of selling it

was by talking about
how big it was.

The Bureau of Reclamation
described it

as simply the biggest thing
on earth.

NARRATOR:
The dam contained 11 million
cubic yards of concrete,

enough to fill 50,000 boxcars
in a train 500 miles long,

or pave a highway from
New York City to Seattle,

down to Los Angeles
and back to Manhattan again.

It had cost
almost $163 million,

and CBI had finished it so fast

that $16 million in savings was
returned to the U.S. Treasury.

Despite the impressive numbers,
however,

the Roosevelt administration
felt the need

to justify the dam
to the American public

and turned to an unlikely ally.

In early May of 1941, a car
pulled up in front of the dam

and out stepped the folk singer
Woody Guthrie.

He had been hired by the
Bonneville Power Authority,

the agency responsible
for managing the electricity

generated by Grand Coulee

and the smaller Bonneville Dam
downstream.

The BPA wanted to make
a documentary film

promoting the virtues
of public power,

and a musicologist
at the Library of Congress

had recommended Guthrie's songs

to enliven
the film's soundtrack.

Well, you know, Woody Guthrie
was broke, too.

He auditioned in the offices
of the BPA administrator

and got a contract.

I think Woody
was also intoxicated

by the vision of the dam
as providing the greatest good

to the greatest number
of people,

and Woody as kind of an activist

on behalf
of the working man,

that vision really
appealed to him.

NARRATOR:
Warned to avoid overtly
political themes,

Guthrie was paid $266
and given a car for a month

to see what inspirational poetry
he could extract

from the largest piece
of concrete

ever created in America.

GUTHRIE:
¶ Roll on, Columbia, roll on ¶

¶ Roll on, Columbia,
roll on ¶

¶ Your power is turning
our darkness to dawn ¶

¶ Roll on, Columbia, roll on. ¶

HARDEN:
He wrote 26 songs,
many of them forgettable.

But he wrote one really good
one, "Roll On, Columbia,"

which somehow captured
the essence

of what they were trying to do.

¶ Roll on, Columbia,
roll on... ¶

NARRATOR:
But in the end,

it would not be Woody Guthrie's
inspirational songs

that would earn Grand Coulee Dam
its legitimacy.

(explosions, bombs whistling)

Only two months
after the Bureau started up

its first massive generator
inside the dam,

the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor and America was at war.

The "White Elephant
Comes into its Own,"

announced
the Saturday Evening Post,

admitting that the dam had gone
"from a magnificent daydream

into one of the best investments
Uncle Sam has ever made."

HARDEN:
So all the critics
of Grand Coulee Dam,

from the engineers
in the East Coast

to some critics in the press
to Republicans in Congress

to the private utilities,

they all shut up because all
of a sudden you could see

that this was a strategic
godsend for the war effort.

HAWLEY:
Roosevelt and his boosters
looked like geniuses.

It was really one of the most
amazing coincidences

in American history.

The industry that becomes
the major consumer

of Columbia electricity
is the aluminum industry.

The aluminum industry is
critical for the war effort.

We need it for bombers, we need
it for all kinds of things.

It takes huge amounts of
electricity to produce aluminum.

The Columbia is
producing electricity.

NARRATOR:
Grand Coulee's turbines helped

the Boeing Airplane Company
in Seattle

churn out a third of the planes
used in World War II,

as many as 16
Flying Fortresses a day.

In Portland, the dam's power

put 750 big ships
on the high seas.

NARRATOR:
The conflict
had delayed the irrigation

of the Columbia Basin,
but by any measure,

Grand Coulee played
a significant role

in powering the American arsenal
of democracy.

Like the current
from some magic wand,

the dam's electricity

reached the modest cities
of the Pacific Northwest

and sparked an astonishing
fluorescence.

Over the course of the war,

Seattle's population swelled
by more than a third,

and Portland's grew to nearly
half a million residents.

A regional economy
that had once been dominated

by fishing and timber
now boasted an industrial base

to rival other major
metropolitan areas

of the country.

O'MARA:
Grand Coulee Dam,
creator of cities.

These great dams of the West

are why we have the metropolitan
areas of the West.

It is providing cheap power.

It is providing water
not only to go in pipes,

but also to water lawns.

It's really fueling
the suburban revolution.

NARRATOR:
Grand Coulee's success created

an insatiable demand
for electricity,

and in the ensuing decades

nine more dams were erected
on the Columbia.

Even Grand Coulee itself
was upgraded,

with a massive third powerhouse

that almost tripled
the dam's output.

NARRATOR:
Rufus Woods would live
to see his dream

of Grand Coulee Dam completed,

but not the waters
of the Columbia

flow onto the land he loved,

having died in 1950
at the age of 72.

WHITE:
For Rufus Woods,
the Grand Coulee Dam

was really ultimately
about Wenatchee.

The problem is,
Grand Coulee Dam

is not ultimately
about Wenatchee.

HARDEN:
Wenatchee was hoping
to become an industrial center.

But it more or less
became a place

where they were growing apples,
which is what it was before.

And the cheap power went
over the mountains

to Seattle to power the birth of
a prosperous Pacific Northwest.

NARRATOR:
All along the Columbia,
the story of Grand Coulee Dam

has been one of dramatic
achievements

and never-ending controversies.

Reviled by many
for its mastery of the river,

it now generates
enough clean power

to run the entire city
of Seattle two times over.

The creator of a vast
agricultural heartland,

its irrigation network
now supports

less than 2,200 landowners.

Hailed for its power
to transform a region,

it now serves as a reminder
of the price of progress.

HARDEN:
The Grand Coulee Dam is

the most wonderfully mixed
metaphor you can imagine.

You know, it was a club
to defeat the Japanese,

an elixir
for the Great Depression,

it made the desert
into a garden,

and it was a bit
of cultural savagery

for the Indians affected

and environmental butchery
for the salmon.

Amends have been made
for some of the mistakes

and lessons have been learned.

And the benefits continue.

HAWLEY:
I think if you look back
at what was happening

in the country at the time,
it was a country in crisis,

it was a people that no longer
trusted their government

or felt that it worked,

and it was an effort
by the federal government

to furnish the greatest
number of people

with the greatest amount
of good.

In that sense,
yes, it was worth it.

But what are those consequences?

What are the values
that were left behind?

What are the new values
that we learned in the 70 years

since Grand Coulee was built?

It's easy for me to object
to what we did to the river.

It's much harder
for me to object

to what we hope will come out
of what we did to the river.

And so I have
the same ambivalence

as when I walk into those dams.

It's both a structure
which seems in many ways

to have done great harm, but
when you're in the middle of it,

you can't believe
how powerful they are

and what a tremendous human
accomplishment they are.

Both of them are true.

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