Grand Coulee Dam was built, and it does provide electricity and irrigation water. But Life’s editors didn’t know how the story would end when they sent a team to document the construction site.

Grand Coulee Dam is among the most powerful energy-generating dams on earth. It’s the bedrock of the federal Columbia River ...

This 1941 cover image shows workers on top of the drum gates of the mile-long Grand Coulee Dam in Washington ... Atkinson Kier Co.) began construction on a high dam, although they had only ...

In the new dry and barren Columbia basin, Grand Coulee will irrigate and electrify ... in Prussia but never before used in U. S. dam construction: freezing the front of the slide.

"There was a fire in 2000 that severed the cable that feeds the light bank," said Coleman Smith, power manager for Grand Coulee Dam. The community has been waiting to see it again ever since.