The Sixty Miles to Wenatchee

Saturday, June 29, Day 67

After we left Moses Lake, we continued toward the coast.  We are passing through what is known as the Columbia Basin Project.  This area is irrigated with water from the Grand Coulee Dam.

It is the largest water reclamation project in the US, currently supplying water to over 670,000 acres. The total area to eventually be irrigated will reach 1,100,000 acres.  With the establishment of the US Bureau of Reclamation to make the dry western states fertile, the Columbia Basin, which has

fertile loess soil, and the Columbia River close by, was the prime candidate for a project of this magnitude. 

My Dad worked on this project, helping build the canals that brought the water here and made it

the fertile farmland it is today.  There are 331 miles of main canals, a number of reservoirs, then 1,339 miles of lateral irrigation canals. 

 As a result of this project, for example,  Grant County, which is where Moses Lake is located, boasts of being the Number One Potato Producing County in the United States.  Most of what they grow goes to McDonalds.  You may have eaten Moses Lake potatoes! 

You can see  the above ground irrigation pipes over this wheat field.  This was nothing but
sagebrush before.  (Oh, Oh- see those clouds?)

This is the East-Low Canal, for which my Dad was the Superintendent.  We were standing on the banks the day the water came down. The water kicked up the dust in front of it, and the water came initially in just a trickle.

The cloudburst we had early this morning laid this wheat field down.  I hope they don't have a lot of crop damage.

The terrain starts to change as you move west.  This is getting close to the Columbia River. Fruit orchards are above the coulees.

Little by little, farmers are conquering this seemingly inhospitable land.

And the Columbia River comes into sight.  It is really breathtaking, with its steep coulee walls.

It's hard for me to imagine that this will one day be farmland.

But, as we get closer to Wenatchee Washington, here are new fruit trees planted beneath the coulee. Part of the area along the route we took today was marked with signs telling you what crops were planted.  I saw field corn, sween corn, alfalfa, timothy hay, potatoes, peas,  Red Delicious apples, blue berries, concord grapes, D-Anjou pears, Gala and Honey Crisp Apples. Before, you could travel the 60 miles from Moses Lake to Wenatchee and see nothing but high desert.

The landscape here is quite dramatic. This area is called channeled scabland.  It took one scientist years to figure out how this geologically occured.  It was the result of eons of glaciers blocking flowing water near where Grand Coulee Dam is now. The glacier would melt and the water would rush through this area, only to be left dry as the glaciers rebuilt.  So these coulee walls are different from normal river channels in that they are rectangular, rather than  U or V shaped.   And, they say these areas are important to planetary scientists as perhaps the best analog for the outflow channels on Mars! Sometimes, as a kid, it felt like we were on Mars, it was so dry and dusty!

The Columbia, like all of the rivers we have seen on our trip, is high.  This is the Rock Reach Dam, one of fourteen hydroelectric dams on the main river.  Rocky Reach has 12 spillways and six of them were open, pretty unusual for this time of year.  There is a lot of rain upstream,  clear into Canada!

Of the 14 dams, ten were built when I was growing up.  We spent a lot of time around them -- sort of a busman's holiday for my Dad. Grand Coulee, Chief Joseph, Rocky Reach, Rock Island, Wanapum, Priest Rapids, McNary, John Day, The Dalles, Bonneville ....

There's a lot of backlash these days against these dams.  But at the time they were built, they couldn't foresee every problem.  I'm pretty proud that my father was one of the men who helped build the west!