Beneath the placid waters of Lake Roosevelt at this location lies what was once one of the most important native sites on the Columbia plateau - Kettle Falls. For thousands of years, Indians from as far as the Great Plains would gather here each…

The Chief Joseph Fish Hatchery, being constructed by the Colville Tribe on this site, is part of an attempt to restore not only some threatened species, but also an endangered way of life. For many native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, life…

Bridgeport, WA was fading in into the surrounding fields and orchards, but was revived with the construction of the Chief Joseph Dam. Nestled on the outside of a bend in the Columbia River, the small single-square-mile town is home to the second…

As the Grand Coulee Dam grew higher in the 1930s, the water of the Columbia River rose behind it. 150 miles of the free-flowing river was transformed into the placid Lake Roosevelt, drowning hundreds of acres of timber, farmland, Indian villages,…

In the depths of America's Great Depression, news of a huge construction project in Washington State brought a flood of unemployed men seeking jobs. The "mushroom towns of the Grand Coulee" sprouted to accommodate them. Workers arrived…

B Street was the busiest street in the Columbia River Basin during the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s. Construction workers came to spend their money on this mud street, which featured ramshackle structures, loud music, and…

Even before the dam was complete, Grand Coulee attracted visitors eager to view this unique geological landscape. Once construction started on the dam, sightseers came from all over the world to witness the creation of the "Eighth Wonder of the…

Larger than all of the Pyramids of Giza put together, this mammoth concrete structure began as a dream in a small arid Central Washington farm town. In 1918, Billy Clapp, a lawyer in Ephrata, explained to Wenatchee Daily World editor Rufus Woods,…

On the outskirts of Spokane's Central Business District lies a scattering of brick warehouses littered with the fading signs of a different era, including one advertising the Fairmont Creamery and Cold Storage. Most of the buildings in this…

The faded J&D Paints advertisement on the side of this building describes more than paint, it is a relic of a time when Spokane was a city of neighborhoods, each with its own miniature commercial district. As the population of Spokane grew in…