Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in design, the restaurant is surrounded by the girders, pipes, and boilers that once
served to pump steam heat to the buildings of downtown Spokane. At lunch,
burgers, sandwiches, and wraps comprise most of the menu, but there are also
more substantial entrees such as grilled salmon and steaks. At dinner, there's
much more creativity, including a good almond-crusted pork and a variety of
pastas dishes. The restaurant also serves the microbrews of the Coeur d'Alene
Brewing Company.
159 S. Lincoln St.
&
509/777-3900.
Reservations recommended. Main courses $8-$13 lunch, $8.50-$32
dinner. AE, DISC, MC, V. Sun-Thurs 11:30am-9:30pm; Fri-Sat 11:30am-11pm.
SPOKANE AFTER DARK
As one of the largest cities in Washington, Spokane has a lively cultural and
nightlife scene. To find out what's going on around Spokane, pick up a copy of
The Pacific Northwest Inlander,
a free weekly arts-and-entertainment newspaper.
You'll find copies in restaurants, record stores, and bookstores. Also check with
the
Spokane Arts Commission
(
&
509/625-6050;
www.spokanearts.org).
Particularly noteworthy are the concerts held throughout the year at the
Cathe-
dral of St. John the Evangelist,
127 E. 12th Ave. (
&
509/838-4277
), a Gothic
cathedral with a 5,000-pipe organ.
6 The Grand Coulee Dam Area
85 miles W of Spokane, 92 miles NE of Wenatchee
Grand Coulee, formerly a wide, dry valley, is a geologic anomaly left over from
the last Ice Age. At that time, a glacier dammed an upstream tributary of the
Columbia River and formed a huge lake in what is today Montana. When this
prehistoric lake burst through its ice dam, massive floods poured down from the
Rocky Mountains. So great was the volume of water that the Columbia River
overflowed its normal channel and, as these flood waters flowed southward, they
carved deep valleys into the basalt landscape of central Washington. As the
floodwaters reached the Cascade Range, they were forced together into one great
torrent that was so powerful it scoured out the Columbia Gorge, carving cliffs
and leaving us with today's beautiful waterfalls. With the end of the Ice Age,
however, the Columbia returned to its original channel and the temporary flood
channels were left high and dry. Early French explorers called these dry channels
coulées,
and the largest of them all was Grand Coulee, which is 50 miles long,
between 2 miles and 5 miles wide, and 1,000 feet deep.
Located at the northern end of the Grand Coulee, Grand Coulee Dam is con-
sidered one of the greatest engineering marvels of the 20th century. Constructed
during the Great Depression, it was the largest man-made structure on earth at
the time of its completion in 1941 and is still the largest concrete dam in North
America. The dam is 550 feet tall, 5,223 feet wide (almost a mile), and impounds
the waters of the Columbia River, forming 130-mile-long Roosevelt Lake.
Despite the name, the Grand Coulee Dam did not, however, fill the Grand
Coulee with water. That did not happen until the 1950s when Dry Falls Dam
was built at the south end of the coulee and waters from Roosevelt Lake were
used to fill the Grand Coulee and form 31-mile-long Banks Lake. The waters of
both Roosevelt Lake and Banks Lake have been used to irrigate the arid lands of
eastern Washington, turning this region into productive farmlands. The Grand
Coulee Dam is also a major producer of hydroelectric power.
