Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center

Grand Coulee Dam was born of the Great Depression, a New Deal public-works project of almost unimaginable ambition. The first stake was driven in 1933, and over nine years thousands of workers poured concrete around the clock to raise a barrier across the Columbia River. The main structure and power plant were finished in 1941, just as the country was about to need every kilowatt it could make.

The numbers are hard to grasp standing at the base. The dam runs about 5,223 feet from end to end, just shy of a mile, rises some 550 feet, and contains nearly twelve million cubic yards of concrete, roughly three times what went into Hoover Dam. It backs the Columbia up into Lake Roosevelt, a reservoir stretching more than a hundred miles toward the Canadian border.

Its purpose was twofold: power and water. During World War II the dam's abundant, cheap electricity fueled the aluminum plants and shipyards of the Pacific Northwest and the secret work at Hanford, and its irrigation network eventually turned a vast stretch of arid basin into productive farmland. It remains one of the most important pieces of infrastructure ever built in the American West.

The visitor center that helps you make sense of all this is a landmark in its own right. Built in the late 1970s to a design by the noted architect Marcel Breuer, its curving concrete form was meant to suggest a generator rotor, and inside you will find films, models, and exhibits on the dam's construction, its role in the Columbia Basin Project, and the river and its history. Admission is free, and it is the natural first stop before you take in the dam itself.

After dark in the summer months comes the show that draws many people here. Since 1989 the Bureau of Reclamation has projected a free nightly laser light show across the downstream face of the dam, using the mile-long spillway as an enormous screen. The current program, running colorful lasers and imagery in time with a narrated story of the river and the region, replaced an earlier show and remains a genuine crowd-pleaser.

There is something surreal about watching beams of light dance across a wall of concrete nearly a mile wide, out in the quiet, dark country of eastern Washington. It is the kind of only-here experience that turns a highway stop into a memory, and because both the center and the show cost nothing, it is one of the best free evenings on the road in the state.

The visitor center sits right on Highway 155 at the base of the dam in the town of Coulee Dam, with parking on site and easy access, no gravel or backroads required. Plan to spend an hour or so in the exhibits and out on the overlook areas taking in the scale of the structure, and check whether guided tours or overlooks up top are open when you visit, as access can change.

If you can, time your stop to stay for the laser light show, which runs nightly through the warm season and begins after full dark. Bring a jacket, since summer nights in the high desert basin cool off fast, and settle in to watch the giant dam light up. Between the daytime spectacle of the structure itself and the nighttime spectacle of the lasers, Grand Coulee earns its place as one of the great engineering sights of the West.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.