Coulee Recollections

Twenty Years Ago

Hospital Park is a park no more – Grand Coulee’s city council approved the sale of the park Tuesday night to Grant County.

Grand Coulee Dam is the first dam chosen in a worldwide study of the environmental effects caused by established older dams.

Four months after work began on the expansion of the Safeway store in Grand Coulee, it is complete. As a very conspicuous balloon on top of the store attested to, they held a grand opening last Wednesday to celebrate.

Selected as the Employee of the Year at the Colville Confederated Tribes casino banquet was Ron Smith.

Forty Years Ago

Selected as new fire chief for the Coulee Dam Volunteer Department is Wayne Rawley, who replaces Roy Terou.

Beckie Evers, a senior at Lake Roosevelt High School, was chosen as student of the month by the Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club.

Lake Roosevelt High School graduate Dave Stuker, is trying out for pitcher for Big Bend Community College, where he is a sophomore.

Fifty Years Ago

Like a giant redwood tree felled by an expert woodsman, one complete block of Grand Coulee Dam tumbled as the rock foundation underneath was blasted away February 28. This monolith, the largest mass thus involved, was majestic in its movement as it slowly started at the moment of blast, then picked up speed until the dust raising impact hit the intended spot. The huge 11,000 ton piece was removed by Green Construction Co. as part of the excavation of the forebay area for the Third Powerplant.

Dan Langstaff, 13, was the winner of the first buttercup contest. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Don Langstaff.

With all four communities of the Grand Coulee Dam area pitching in with financial aid, a new breathalyzer machine will soon be installed here.

Carlson Motors were selling a 1962 Pontiac Bonneville, 1962 Falcon and a 1961 Pontiac station wagon for $675 each.

Sixty Years Ago

The Grand Coulee Dam area has something new in its midst this week. The Star has just completed the installation of the first offset press to be used commercially in this area.

Coulee Dam became a functioning fourth class municipality Monday evening when the oath of office was administered to the mayor, Edmund W. Cole; treasurer, Lucile Evans Wilson; and councilmen James Armstrong, Lenard Engvall, Arnold Smeltzer, Elmer Tombre and William G. Miller.

Seventy Years Ago

Morrison-Knudsen Company of Seattle submitted a low offer of $6,136,234 to the Bureau of Reclamation today for building 17 miles of the Columbia Basin Project’s west canal from the vicinity of Soap Lake southwesterly beyond Ephrata.

The Bureau of Reclamation has announced this week that for the first time since December 14, the discharge of the Columbia through the turbines of the west powerhouse has been exceeded by the inflow from Lake Roosevelt.