Environmental Uses of the Land: Bonneville Dam
 Courtesy of The Bonneville Power Administration |
Before and after Bonneville
Dam construction. Click on photos to enlarge.
Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers |
Truly, in the construction of this dam we have had our
eyes on the future of the Nation. Its cost will be returned to the people
of the United States many times over in the improvement of navigation
and transportation, the cheapening of electric power, and the distribution
of this power to hundreds of small communities within a great radius.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 28, 1937, Bonneville Dam Dedication
Bonneville Dam was the first of 14 federally funded "big" dams on the Columbia River. The dam, which lies thirty miles east of Camas, was built between 1933 and 1937. It inundated the Cascades Rapids, a traditional Native American fishery. The Dam was promoted as a mechanism for improving river navigation and providing electrical power. Bonneville epitomized Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to embark on the "best kind of building -- the building of great public projects for the benefit of the public and the definite object of building human happiness."
Named for a failed 19th century fur trader and on-leave
military man Captain Benjamin Bonneville, the dam was part of the New
Deal's Public Works Administration that provided jobs for victims of the
1930s Depression -- emigrants from the Dust Bowl, poverty stricken eastern
cities, and out-of-work loggers and agricultural workers.
Laborers worked around the clock in eight-hour shifts, pouring concrete
and operating jackhammers in all kinds of weather. They blocked the river
with cofferdams and poured enough concrete to fill a two-hundred mile
long freight train.
It eventually cost $88.4 million to build the spillway dam on one side of Bradford Island, a powerhouse, and navigation locks on the other side of the island. The Bonneville Power Administration added a second powerhouse in the 1980s and dug a channel through Bradford Island.
Photo
Archive: Bonneville Dam and the Cascade Locks
Speech:
Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1937 Bonneville Address
1939
Brochure: "Fishways
at Bonneville Dam"
Woody Guthrie sings about the Bonneville Dam in the
"Ballad of the Great Grand Coulee"
WSU
Vancouver student paper about Bonneville Dam
Part I - The Cascade Indians & Early Town History
Part II - Mill Town
Part III - Growth and Change
Table
of Contents
<> Photo Archive
Oral
History Archive <> Document Archive
<> Bibliography
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