I wonder how many of us realize that we have the equivalent of any of these right here, in the Pacific Northwest of North America?
The pacification of the Columbia River and the dams that made this possible are as remarkable, in their own way, as anything other civilizations have produced. That this is unrecognized by most of us is surely only because what has been created appears so ordinary, so obviously functional, and so few of us look at the system in its entirety.
Sandy and I recommend Blaine Harden's "A River Lost", if this topic at all appeals to you: very readable, by a journalist who grew up in Moses Lake in eastern Washington. He has his biases, but many of his insights illuminated what we saw on this trip.
The Columbia is the 4th largest river by outflow volume in North America, and the largest to flow into the Pacific. In doing so, it drops 820 meters from Canal Flats on Columbia Lake in BC to Astoria, Oregon on the Pacific.
It drains an area the size of France, much of which is irrigated. The Columbia and its most significant tributaries, the Kootenay (Kootenai in the US), the Snake, and the Pend d'Oreille (Pend Oreille or Penderay in the US) are collectively also by far the largest producer of hydro power in North America, (quite possibly the world), and the combined Columbia and Snake are navigable as far east as Lewiston, Idaho, creating a water-transportation route for tug and barge as well as for smaller ships.
The result is that the Columbia and its tributaries have become, for the most part, a series of reservoirs masquerading as lakes, with the largest of these (thanks to the Columbia River Treaty) in British Columbia.
Nearly 100 dams make all this possible; however, most of these are minor and created solely for irrigation purposes, so Sandy and I decided to pursue only 25 of the 31 most significant on this trip, which leaves two on the Snake and four on the Pend d'Oreille which didn't fit our route, for viewing on another occasion.
We started in BC with the Keenleyside Dam, completed in 1968, on the Columbia at Castlegar:
The Keenleyside Dam creates the Arrow Lakes, which stretch all the way from Castlegar to Revelstoke, the site of the Revelstoke Dam, also on the Columbia.
The Kootenay meets the Columbia at Castlegar, so instead of following the Columbia, which doesn't have a road along it at this point,we followed the Kootenay towards Nelson and Kootenay Lake, viewing five small power dams in rapid succession: first the Brilliant Dam (1944)
...second the South Slocan Dam (1928):
...third the Lower Bonnington Dam (1924)
...fourth the Upper Bonnington Dam (1906)
...and fifth the Corra Lynn Dam (1932), which raised the level of Kootenay Lake to its present height.
From Nelson, the tour took us up Kootenay Lake and up to the Duncan Dam, completed in 1967 to control the flow of the Duncan River into the Kootenay River. Of the Columbia system dams we viewed, it alone has no power generation.
There's a road of sorts from the Duncan Dam past Trout Lake to Galena Bay, where a ferry crosses Upper Arrow Lake. The road continues from here to Revelstoke, the site of the Revelstoke Dam, completed in 1984, and one of the largest on the system.
The Revelstoke Dam creates Lake Revelstoke, which is the Columbia for the next 100 km, up to another of the big ones, the Mica Dam, finished in 1973, which in turn creates Kinbasket Lake, which stretches from near Golden to near Valemount, some 200 km.
At this point we temporarily abandon the Dam Tour, and head across the Rockies to view the lovely dams of central Saskatchewan, the Qu'Appelle and the Gardiner on the South Saskatchewan. They, however are not part of the Tour, having nothing at all to do with the pacification of the Columbia system.
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