Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

The Mighty Columbia…The river now becomes deeply encañoned….the bluffs are many-colored….To this must be added the green of the trees….the old gold of the bunch-grass shining in the sunlight….forming one of the grandest, most beautiful sights in the universe. Lt. Thomas W. Symons, Columbia River Navigation Survey, 1881.

Columbia River

For thousands of years the Columbia River flowed wild and free. The untamed waters made their way to the Pacific – changing channels, skirting glaciers, suddenly flooding – controlled only by what nature dictated. Nomadic Indians moved with the seasons and followed their sources of food. Various Salishan tribes in the north whose lived centered around the Columbia River called it Swah-netk-qhu – Big Water. Indians knew the river for its rich salmon runs and, in the 1800s, traders and settlers knew it as a transportation route that brought supplies upriver and delivered furs and crops downriver. In the mid-1900s the building of dams harnessed the river as never before. People now experienced the river in new ways. Dams provided electricity and irrigation water and protected homes from flooding. Construction of Grand Coulee Dam led to the creation of Lake Roosevelt. In 1946 the area was federally designated a national recreation area.

Today sagebrush and golden bunchgrass adorn the shores along the southern half of the lake. Lichens on basalt cliffs add splashes of yellow, red, and green. The northern half of the park reveals cooler mountains forested with ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and western larch. As Lieutenant Symons did in 1881, you can marvel at the landscape – it is still a grand and most beautiful sight.Reading the Rocks

During the ice age a massive glacial lobe moved down from Canada, creating an ice dam that blocked the natural courses of rivers. Rivers backed up. Huge lakes formed, including Lake Missoula. The increasing level of the water behind the ice dam caused it to float and burst. Sudden, massive walls of water – some thought to be 400 feet high with speeds approaching 65 miles per hour – flushed across central Washington. This cycle, glaciers advancing and retreating, floods caused by ice dams forming and bursting, repeated many times. The water carried gravel and debris, icebergs and boulders, scouring bedrock into the bizarre landscape we call channeled scablands and gouging steep-walled gorges called coulees.

Fort Spokane and the Indians

Fort Spokane, established in 1880, was one of the last frontier forts built in the West. Ownership of land became a problem as the area filled with entrepreneurs seeking the agricultural opportunities promoted by the Northern Pacific Railroad. Keeping the semi-nomadic Spokane and Colville tribes within reservation boundaries – and keeping land-hungry settlers out – was potentially a difficult job. The fort’s strategic location at the confluence of the Columbia and Spokane rivers allowed a small peace-keeping force to keep an eye on the Indians and the settlers. Fortunately, this was a time of relative peace. The troops at Fort Spokane saw little action aside from routine drills, parades, and patrol duty.

In 1898 most troops left for duty in Cuba after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. The post was decommissioned and transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The fort opened as an Indian boarding school in 1900, but declining enrollments closed the school in 1908. The fort served on and off as a tuberculosis sanitorium and Indian hospital until its final closure in 1929.