Lake Koocanusa is what happened when the Libby Dam was completed in 1975, backing up the Kootenay well before it turns into the Kootenai in Montana. The result is a lake on the KOOtenay, half in CANada and half in the USA.
The Libby Dam was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, who provide a lovely, and apparently free, campsite just below the dam:
From the Libby Dam and Libby, Montana, along the Kootenai to Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, and then down to Sandpoint, on the Pend Oreille. We followed it to Albeni Falls Dam (1955), located between Oldtown and Priest River, both in Idaho.
Ideally, we would have followed the Pend Oreille up into Canada to where it joins the Columbia just south of Trail, BC. However, that would have involved two trips through Customs and Immigration, which didn't feel worth it, so instead we missed the Box Canyon, Boundary, Seven Mile, and Waneta dams and cut across from Tiger, Washington, to Kettle Falls on Roosevelt Lake, which is what happened to the Columbia when the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest electric-power producing facility and largest concrete structure in the USA, was completed in 1942.
One of the remarkable features of this dam is the water that is pumped uphill at this point to fill the Grand Coulee, now called Banks Lake. Much of that water is removed in turn for irrigation, but some of it generates power as it is returned to the Columbia during times when irrigation is not needed and power is.
Downstream from the Grand Coulee Dam is mostly a lake created by the Chief Joseph Dam (commissioned in 1955, but completed in 1979, when it achieved its present height and generating capacity); however, the road between the two cuts overland, so we have only the map to confirm this.
The irony of naming this dam after Chief Joseph, chief of the Nez Perce who ended his days on the Colville Indian Reservation, while it blocks the salmon on which the Indians used to depend seems inescapable.
From the Chief Joseph Dam we followed Lake Pateros, which is the Columbia raised by the Wells Dam (1967).
The Rocky Reach Dam (1961, but added to in 1971) is the first of the Columbia dams built to be relatively fish friendly. Consequently, Lake Entiat above it has a small salmon run.
The Rocky Reach Dam was built without public money; one of the participants was ALCOA, which consequently has a plant just south of Wenatchee.
The oldest dam to span the Columbia is the Rock Island Dam (1933), just south of Wenachee.
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The Wanapum Dam (1963), near Vantage, Washington, creates Wanapum Lake. Both are named after the local Indian band.
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The Priest Rapids Dam (completed 1961) and Lake are named after the rapids the dam drowned.
From here it is possible to proceed to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick on a road through the Hanford Nuclear site, but it is not possible to see Hanford Reach, "the only free-flowing, non-tidal stretch of the Columbia River in the United States". So we decided to go east to see the lower two dams on the Snake River, leaving the Little Goose and Lower Granite dams, which render the Snake navigable all the way to Lewiston, Idaho, for another occasion.
The Lower Monumental Lock and Dam (1969 and 1981) separates Lake Herbert G West from Lake Sacajawea:
The lowest lock and dam on the Snake is the Ice Harbor Lock and Dam (1961 and 1976). After this it's all Columbia River and four more dams to the Pacific Ocean.
At this point the van develops a coolant leak, and we're left to explore the delights of Kennewick on foot for several days. But that's for another blog post.
The Tri-Cities are on the banks of Lake Wallula, which extends upriver into the Hanford site, east to the Ice Harbor Dam, and south to the McNary Dam (1954, fully-operational 1957, 2.2 km long) at Umatilla, on the Oregon side of the border between Washington and Oregon.
The highest lock on the system (at 110 feet) is at the John Day Dam (1971), which creates Lake Umatilla.
The Dalles Lock and Dam (1957) create Lake Celilo. The dam submerged Celilo Falls, which, Wikipedia tells us, was: "the economic and cultural hub of Native Americans in the region and the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America".
But it helped make the river navigable, and still produces a lot of electricity.
The last of the Columbia dams is the Bonneville Lock and Dam, located in the Columbia Gorge. The Bonneville Lock (1993) replaced a much smaller lock (1938) which in turn replaced the Cascades Locks and Canal (first operated in 1896 to bypass the Cascades rapids). Both early locks apparently still exist, but the latter is underwater, as are the Cascades it bypassed, and the former is unused. The Bonneville Dam (1937) has two powerhouses and is actually several dams connecting two islands. It creates Lake Bonneville.
There appears to be a short stretch of swift water down from the dam, but very soon the Columbia becomes tidal.
And that's the end of the Columbia.
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