Why the US Relies on This One Mega-Dam

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]We are looking at 12 million cubic yards of solid concrete. You could build a road from Seattle, Washington all the way to Miami, Florida with the concrete in this dam. This is the ultimate masterpiece of human defiance against nature. But what it destroyed to exist is just as massive as what it built.

[00:00:19]Welcome to the Grand Kulie Dam, the largest power plant in the United States. It single-handedly irrigated a desert, powered the Pacific Northwest, and powered all of the aluminum factories that helped win World War II.

[00:00:33]But to build it, the United States government had to commit the ultimate ecological and cultural assassination in this region's history. So, we're here to find out one thing. Is the Grand Kulie Dam a good thing or a bad thing? Let's go find out.

[00:00:53]Let's talk a little bit about where Grand Culie is actually located. Because while it is located in Washington State, it's probably not in an area that you're super familiar with. We're here in eastern Washington on the other side of the Cascade Mountain Range. And this is why everything looks so much more dry and aid. The infamously wet and rainy Washington really only exists on the western side of the Cascades. But what's really interesting is that the Grand Kulie Dam sits right on the mighty Columbia River. The very same river that will head south from here, hit the Oregon border, and then head west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It is easily one of the largest and grandest rivers in all of North America, which means to damn it was a really impressive and kind of blasphemous act. But don't worry, we'll get to that.

[00:01:51]We're not quite yet at the dam, but that's because we need to show you something that's very important. Long before the era of mega dams, the Columbia River, which is behind me, ran wild. For 10,000 years, the Spokane tribe and other neighboring indigenous nations mastered these waterways and depended on it for its legendary salmon runs. Now, the beating heart of this waterway was Kettle Falls. Located just upstream from where the dam is today, these roaring rapids hosted the second largest salmon fishery on the Columbia River. It was a great gathering place of the region. It was the economic and cultural center for the entire Pacific Northwest interior. But all that changed. The arrival of fur traders in the late 1700s was just the beginning of a radical shift. By 1872, the US government had forced the original inhabitants of this area onto reservations, clearing the way for American expansion. But these new settlers faced a harsh reality. They needed immense amounts of water to survive this arid landscape. To irrigate the basin, the government broke ground on Grand Kulie Dam in 1933. When the river was finally choked off a few years later, a massive 150 m long reservoir swallowed the valley. Kettle Falls and the 10,000 years of cultural heritage were permanently drowned beneath 100 ft of water. So, how do you completely stop the most powerful river in North America? You don't. You choke it. And I think that's our cue to finally see Gran Dam.

[00:03:23]Granulie Dam is a massive engineering marvel built to hold back an unimaginable amount of pressure.

[00:03:29]Honestly, exploring its history made us realize how often we do the exact same thing in our lives. Bottling up stress, expectations, or anxiety until it feels like we might just overflow. Finding an outlet to release that pressure is crucial, which is why we are so glad to partner with the sponsor of today's video, BetterHelp. This past year has been crazy for me. I traveled all over the world and even got engaged. It's been incredible, but uprooting your life means leaving behind routines and familiar support systems, which can sometimes be really challenging. That's why having a consistent outlet to talk about all of these changes is so important. And it's why a service like BetterHelp is so necessary. When I got home after traveling all last year, I had a lot of new experiences that were fun, but also overwhelming. And even things like being on vastly different time zones from my family brought stress and anxiety. But being able to talk about those feelings with my therapist made it so I could keep traveling and enjoying the experience. Thankfully, BetterHelp makes starting therapy super easy. And today, over 6 million people have gotten help through BetterHelp, earning a 4.8 out of five rating on the app store. So, if you want to stop holding back all that pressure, click the link in the description or go to betterhelp.com/glex and get 10% off your first month of therapy. Huge thanks to BetterHelp. Now, let's get back to the dam visitor center. You can definitely get real close to the dam. And it is massive here.

[00:05:24]So, right here is an old image of the Columbia River before the dam was in.

[00:05:31]And you can just tell how much more land was here. It's wild how much they flooded.

[00:05:47]Honestly, not nearly enough people are inside that museum. Totally free, very cool, very interpretive, very hands-on.

[00:05:54]Check out the uh visitor center museum if you get a chance. But now, Alexa, >> what do you think about getting a little bit closer to this thing?

[00:06:00]>> I think it's time.

[00:06:01]>> It's time. So, let's head on down. It's as close as we can get.

[00:06:06]So, here's the real story. To get the kind of electricity to power parts of Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and even bits of Canada and Mexico. You have to force an unstoppable object, the Columbia River, through a tiny bottleneck. This is hydroelectric hydraology at its most extreme. You see, this dam holds back a massive amount of water, about three cubic miles to be precise, which then creates massive gravitational pressure.

[00:06:43]That water is then forced down through massive pipes called pentocks where it then slams into turbines. The river's gravity spins the metal of those turbines, creating enough electricity to power a city of 2 million people. All with no pollution being emitted by the power plant itself. To put it simply, it's a flawless machine. But there is one thing. When you build a 550 ft wall of solid concrete across a river, electricity isn't the only thing you create. You also create a dead end. And that comes with some very serious side effects.

[00:07:20]While we're still here, I just want to give you one quick fact, and that's how much it costs to build this dam. The original cost of the dam in the 1940s was 300 million. Even today, that sounds like a lot. But when we put that into 2026, that number is really high. In today's dollars, that would be 5 bill541 million to complete. That's insane. Wow.

[00:07:48]>> But also makes sense when you look at just how large this dam is.

[00:07:54]>> Before we leave the bottom of the dam here on this side of the dam. Anyways, I thought there was no better place to do a little bit of geography trivia.

[00:08:04]>> Woohoo!

[00:08:05]>> Dam edition.

[00:08:07]>> Oh boy.

[00:08:08]>> Are you ready, Alexa?

[00:08:10]>> As ready as I'll ever be. I don't know a whole lot about dams.

[00:08:13]>> All right, here we go. First question.

[00:08:15]During the construction of the Grand Kulie Dam, the government actually hired a legendary American folk singer for 30 days to write songs praising the dam and the Columbia River.

[00:08:25]>> Who was it?

[00:08:26]>> It's a folk singer >> in the 1930s.

[00:08:29]>> Yes.

[00:08:30]>> I don't even know a folk singer in 2026.

[00:08:32]Uh, Noah. Just kidding.

[00:08:36]>> Noacon was not yet born yet.

[00:08:40]>> All right.

[00:08:40]>> I have no idea.

[00:08:41]>> It was Woody Guthrie. You don't know who Woody Guthther is?

[00:08:45]>> I mean, it sounds familiar, but never have pulled that out of my hat.

[00:08:48]>> Oh, boy.

[00:08:50]Number two, if you visit the Bonavville Dam today on the Oregon Washington border, so kind of near our our neck of the woods, you can meet a famous local celebrity named Herman. What kind of animal is Herman?

[00:09:03]>> Oh, is Herman that really weird fish that's kind of scary looking with like all the teeth?

[00:09:08]>> That is true.

[00:09:09]>> I don't know what they're called, >> but I but I I get it cuz I described it.

[00:09:13]No, no, you need the name.

[00:09:14]>> Hold on. It's not a trout. Is it? Oh, it's gonna hurt me. I know this one.

[00:09:21]What is it called?

[00:09:22]>> Herman the sturgeon.

[00:09:24]>> Ah, yeah. I think I get that. But I described it, so I think that's a half a point.

[00:09:29]>> Half a point. Okay. All right. Number three. For decades, two dams blocked the Elwell River in Washington. But in 2014, the state made history by doing what to them? destroying the dam.

[00:09:42]>> That's correct. They tore them down, which is not something that typically happens. Once a dam is up, usually the governments will not let you take them back down.

[00:09:52]>> And number four, this is going to be a hard one.

[00:09:55]>> Oh, cuz are easy.

[00:09:58]>> If you look at the face of Ross Dam in Washington's North Cascades, it looks like a giant 500t tall concrete waffle.

[00:10:06]Why does it have this bizarre grid pattern?

[00:10:08]>> Waffle. It has that pattern for aesthetics.

[00:10:14]>> Not quite.

[00:10:17]It has that pattern so that they could snap more dam onto it later. So, it started off small and then like Legos, they wanted to add bits and pieces to it.

[00:10:27]>> That's cool.

[00:10:27]>> Well, Alexa, you got one and a half points. Not bad. Honestly, this was a hard trivia.

[00:10:32]>> Damn trivia. It's not easy.

[00:10:35]>> That was damn hard. All right, let's head over to the other side of the dam.

[00:10:44]When we look at the Columbia River today, it's easy to just see water, a resource to be managed. But before any of this concrete was poured, this river wasn't just a waterway. It was the central artery of a massive living organism. In fact, it was one of the most biologically rich corridors on the entire planet. You see, the Columbia River is a biological superighway. We're talking about a river system with ancient 10- foot long dinosaur-like sturgeon fish, millions of Pacific lampray, and of course, steelhead and sckeye salmon that navigate these waterways. But the true magic of this river was its role as a conveyor belt.

[00:11:24]You see, all along this river system, millions of salmon would hatch along these river banks. And then they would swim all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, where they would spend years absorbing the rich nutrients of the sea before swimming all the way back to where they originally spawned somewhere right around here. And when they died, again, right around here, they would feed the bears, the wolves, the eagles, and even the soil itself, the towering pine forests of the Pacific Northwest.

[00:11:52]The thing that the Pacific Northwest is so famous for literally grew on the nitrogen brought in from the ocean by these fish. Basically, the river fed the land.

[00:12:06]The entire region survival depended on this cycle remaining unbroken. So when the engineers decided to plug this artery, they weren't just changing the flow of water, they were starving an entire ecosystem. Which leads us to one very specific tragic story. But now I promise you to tell that story, we're going to go on to the other side of the dam. Super pinky promise. Swear all this water and all I want to do is go swimming.

[00:12:53]Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was the president that authorized the uh construction of the Grand Kulie Dam. I believe as part of the works project association to you know help the US get out of the Great Depression. They dedicated well at least a statue to him as well as a whole lake Franklin D.

[00:13:11]Roosevelt Lake.

[00:13:14]When Gran Kulie was built, the engineers had to make a calculated decision, one that would ultimately crush the biodiversity of the river that had existed for tens of thousands of years before. They decided that because the dam was too tall and the technology was too expensive, they would not include fish ladders. In fact, the fish would have to climb over 300 ft to pass over the dam. And at the time, nothing to that scale had ever been done before.

[00:13:40]So, there were no guarantees that it would even work. But by doing that, they intentionally had to sever the Columbia River in half. On one side, fish ponds would continue like normal. On the other, the fish would never return.

[00:13:52]Here's the thing. It didn't just drown the past, it pretty much killed the future. And it wiped out the giants of the Pacific Northwest. A type of fish that we really can't imagine swimming here today. But to get to that, we need to go to one more spot.

[00:14:20]They are called the June hogs. They were a legendary run of the Chinook salmon and they weighed up to 100 lbs. They were so massive because they had to have enough energy to swim the thousand m to spawn. They spawned in the upper reaches of the Columbia basin. As we already talked about, there were no fish letters. And because there was no way over the dam, Grandi acted as a guillotine. This is about to get a little graphic, but the fish smashed against the concrete dam because they had no other way to go. And so most of them died right here at the base of the Grand Kulie and the legendary dune hog population drastically declined. Today, they are fully extinct. Now, a lot of species go extinct and it's really unfortunate, but this one's really important. I'm going to pass it to Jeff to say why.

[00:15:10]>> Okay, so here's the deal. You might be thinking to yourself, it's just a single fish species. What's the big deal? Well, it all comes back to something that we learned about in grade school. Something called the food web. You see, the loss of a single fish species has had profound impacts on all the wildlife in the area and the humans. Without the fish spawning north of the Grand Kulie, the bears, eagles, and wolves no longer had a stable food source. This in turn meant that the species that relied on them, such as the bushes and the grasses, by way of their droppings and culling of prey species, suffered just as much. And even the indigenous people who relied on that specific fish as a means of food, culture, and their very way of life suffered with the disappearance of the Junehog. So the Grand Kulie gave the Pacific Northwest a lot, but it also took away the very essence of one of the most important rivers in the entire continent. And so coming back full circle, is the Grand a good or a bad thing? It's really neither. And it's kind of both.

[00:16:12]It provides us with a lot of electricity, things that we need, things that we want, but the ecological cost was also extremely high. And there's no one doing that kind of ecological damage. So it's a bit of a mixed legacy.

[00:16:24]as most things are.

[00:16:31]>> It's been so much fun going around Gran Kulie, getting different viewpoints of one of the largest dams in the United States. Feel like I learned a lot.

[00:16:39]>> Yeah. So, Alexa, what do you think about the Gran Kulie Dam?

[00:16:44]>> It's complicated.

[00:16:46]It's important. Like, we obviously need the power, but also a lot of animals and human lives are affected by this dam.

[00:16:52]So, it's not a clearcut good or bad like you've already said.

[00:16:55]>> Yeah. Well, with that, next week we have another complicated topic to talk about.

[00:17:01]>> The channelneled scablands.

[00:17:03]>> Woo. The channel's scablands. If you remember a few weeks ago, we did a video about the Missoula floods down in Oregon. This is kind of the other side of that story. This is sort of the Washington side of it. It's a fun story that's kind of all about a historic theft of sorts of well very valuable soil.

[00:17:23]>> So come back next week >> for another geographic adventure.

[00:17:28]>> See you then.

[00:17:32]>> Yeah, bigger river though.

[00:17:35]Bigger river though. Not with Alexa.

[00:17:39]>> I think you cut me out the entire a lot.

[00:17:41]But when but when we think of but when we put it into today's let me concentrate.

[00:17:51]But it's been really fun going to all of the different It's been really fun going to all the different spots around go.

[00:18:01]It's been really fun going around seeing Grand Kulie Dam, the largest dam in America or at least one of them.

[00:18:08]>> Physically, I'm not sure if it's larger than the Hoover Dam.