Spillway of Grand Coulee Dam, Grand Coulee, WA, circa 1943

About this postcard

The spillway of Grand Coulee Dam carries water over the concrete dam and into the Columbia River, with clouds spread across a blue sky. The dam was the centerpiece of the Columbia Basin Project, a federal effort to irrigate central Washington and generate power on the Columbia. Publicists called it the "Eighth Wonder of the World" and billed it as the world's largest power dam. By the early 1940s its generators were feeding the Bonneville-Grand Coulee transmission network, and the dam was sending 400,000 kilowatts into that grid.