D2.Geo.5.9-12: How Decisions Over Time Reshaped the Upper Columbia

Overview

Lesson Procedure

75-85 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice20 minutes
4. Independent Practice15-25 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A government plans a huge project that will bring jobs, electricity and farm water to a region, but it will flood a river valley where people live and fish. Before anyone can say whether the project was a good decision, what questions would you need answered?"

   Collect questions on the board and group them into four evaluation criteria: scale (how big and how widespread are the effects?), distribution (who gains and who bears the costs?), duration (do the effects last for years or for generations?) and response (did later decisions reduce the costs or share the benefits?). Tell students they will use these criteria at the end of the lesson.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Part 1: Key terms. A political decision is made through government: a law, a funding choice, a court settlement, a treaty or a land designation. An economic decision is a choice about producing and using resources: where to invest, what to grow, how to sell electricity. Large public projects usually mix the two, because a government decides to spend money in order to produce economic results. Throughout time means decisions come in sequences: each one changes the place, and later decision makers respond to the new place. Anadromous fish, such as salmon and steelhead, hatch in rivers, grow up in the ocean and return upriver to spawn, so a dam with no way past it cuts them off from the river above.

   Part 2: The place. Show the upper Columbia on a wall map: the river flows south from Canada into Washington, past Kettle Falls, to the dam site, then on to the Pacific. Read Table 1 together, asking students to label each row political, economic or both. Then read Table 2 and Diagram 2.

   Table 1. Decisions and events on the upper Columbia River (sources: National Park Service, Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area pages; Bureau of Reclamation, Grand Coulee Dam pages; Public Law 103-436)

   Year	Decision or event	Source
   1811	Fur trader David Thompson reaches Kettle Falls. Representatives of several Native American tribes from up to 200 miles away gathered there to harvest salmon and steelhead; Kettle Falls was the second largest fishery on the Columbia River.	NPS, Fort Colvile page
   1933-1941	Grand Coulee Dam and its Left Powerhouse are built, authorized under the National Industrial Recovery Act and later by the Rivers and Harbors Act.	Reclamation, About page
   1941	The dam is completed; the old Fort Colvile site near Kettle Falls is flooded by the new reservoir.	NPS, Fort Colvile page
   1943	Congress passes the Columbia Basin Project Act, authorizing the canals and laterals that carry irrigation water to the Columbia Basin.	Reclamation, About page
   1948	Congress designates Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, operated by the National Park Service.	Reclamation, History page
   1980	The final generator comes online at the Nathaniel Washington Power Plant; Grand Coulee becomes the largest hydropower complex in the United States.	Reclamation, About page
   1994	Congress approves a settlement with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (see Source 3).	Public Law 103-436

   Table 2. Population of Grant County (the main Columbia Basin Project county) and of Washington State (real data: U.S. Census Bureau, 1990 Census report CPH-2-49, Table 3, for 1940-1990; 2010 Census; Vintage 2024 estimate for July 1, 2024)

   Year	Grant County	Washington State
   1940	14,668	1,736,191
   1950	24,346	2,378,963
   1960	46,477	2,853,214
   1970	41,881	3,413,244
   1980	48,522	4,132,353
   1990	54,758	4,866,692
   2010	89,120	6,724,540
   2024 (estimate)	104,717	7,958,180

   • Classifying a decision

     In 1943 Congress passed the Columbia Basin Project Act, which authorized canals to carry water from the reservoir to dry farmland. Is this a political or an economic decision?

     Result: It is a political decision (a law passed by Congress) with economic goals (irrigated farming). Naming both parts shows how the two kinds of decision work together.

   • Reading population change

     Use Table 2. How did Grant County's growth from 1940 to 1960 compare with the state's?

     Result: Grant County: 46,477 ÷ 14,668 ≈ 3.17, more than three times as many people. State: 2,853,214 ÷ 1,736,191 ≈ 1.64. Grant County grew much faster, which fits a new irrigation economy, but the table alone cannot prove the cause.

   • Measuring an environmental change

     Reclamation's History page says Lake Roosevelt has a surface area of 82,000 acres and stretches 151 miles to the Canadian border. How many square miles of river valley does the reservoir cover? (1 square mile = 640 acres.)

     Result: 82,000 ÷ 640 ≈ 128 square miles of former river, shoreline and valley now under water, along a 151-mile stretch of the Columbia.

   • Separating evidence from perspective

     Source 1 is written by the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that runs the dam. How should that shape the way students use it?

     Result: Source 1 is strong evidence for what the agency built and the benefits it reports, such as power, irrigation and flood control. It is weaker evidence for the costs, so students should corroborate it with sources written from other perspectives before they evaluate.

3. Guided Practice20 minutes

   Read Sources 1 and 2 side by side. Source 1 comes from the Bureau of Reclamation's page about Grand Coulee Dam. Source 2 comes from the National Park Service page about the remains of the old town of Kettle Falls. Words to know: mitigate means to make a harm less severe; laterals are smaller canals that branch off a main canal; inundation means flooding; condemned property is taken by the government for public use, with payment to the owner. Paragraph numbers count only the paragraphs shown.

   1In addition, Grand Coulee Dam funds a complex of three hatcheries—Leavenworth, Winthrop and Entiat—collectively known as the Leavenworth Complex, to mitigate for the loss of anadromous fish above the dam. Over 2 million spring chinook and summer steelhead are raised annually.

   2Authorized under the National Industrial Recovery Act and later by the Rivers and Harbors Act, Grand Coulee Dam and the Left Powerhouse were constructed between 1933 and 1941. The Columbia Basin Project Act of 1943, based on extensive studies known as the Columbia Basin Joint Investigations, authorized construction of the Columbia Basin Project, which consists of 330 miles of major distribution canals, lakes and reservoirs, and about 2,000 miles of laterals that currently irrigate approximately 680,000 acres of land.

   3The economic values of the Columbia Basin Project include irrigated crops valued at $1.2 billion annually, hydropower production of approximately $500 million annually, and the prevention of more than $206 million in flood damages since 1950. The Columbia Basin Project also resulted in the creation of vast wetlands and riparian areas and provides recreation benefits to about four million visitors each year.

   4This project made the development of the Pacific Northwest possible and its importance to the nation has been profound. Its influence spread outward to benefit all citizens. Construction of Grand Coulee Dam put thousands to work during the Depression. Grand Coulee's generators played a vital role in supplying power to build planes, ships, tanks and develop atomic energy during World War II. Following the war, the Columbia Basin Project provided opportunities for returning veterans to farm their own tracts of land. With the completion of the final generating unit in the Nathaniel "Nat" Washington Power Plant, Grand Coulees' status as the largest hydropower generating facility in the United States was assured, and tangible benefits to Canadian residents were realized.

   1The Grand Coulee Dam was built on the Columbia River during the 1930s Depression as a part of President Roosevelt’s Works Projects Administration, a plan to irrigate the parched farmland of the Columbia Basin, bring electricity to rural areas and get the unemployed back to work, also brought the demise of 11 towns along the river. Faced with inundation by Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir created by the dam, some three thousand people had to leave their homes. Land, home and business owners had few options. They had to sell their property or see it condemned. Their buildings could be sold as well. Owners could pay for them to be moved or watch them burn.

   2A few communities, like Marcus and Kettle Falls, persevered by relocating, but many smaller towns simply broke apart and scattered to the wind. The actual sites of most of the towns have disappeared under the reservoir, but the remnants of these two towns can still be seen. Marcus is visible during the lake’s drawdown and curious visitors can still stumble across the remains of old Kettle Falls year round in Locust Grove. They can imagine what brought people to the town as they look at the stairs that once served the stage-coach riders. Careful observers can find the family name Bevan etched into a sidewalk outside the old bakery. The remains of old Kettle Falls are slowly being reclaimed by the landscape but if we continue to talk about the town and remember its stories the town will never truly be gone.

   1. Sort the decisions. Prompt: list every decision each source names and label it political, economic or both. Ask which source names more decisions, and why that might be.
   2. Sort the effects. Prompt: build a two-column chart, environmental effects and cultural effects, with the source and paragraph for each entry. Push students to find at least one environmental effect in each source.
   3. Compare perspectives. Prompt: what does each source emphasize, and what does it leave out? Students should name the author of each source and connect its emphasis to that author's role.
   4. Draft a criterion statement as a class. Choose one criterion from the Warm-Up and write a sentence that applies it to the two sources, for example on distribution: "The benefits Source 1 describes reached ___, while the costs Source 2 describes fell on ___."
4. Independent Practice15-25 minutes

   Read Source 3, a later political decision. Source 3 is part of a federal law passed in 1994, more than 50 years after the dam was finished. A finding is a statement of facts that Congress says it relies on; a settlement ends a legal claim with terms both sides accept; litigation means a lawsuit. The law's own labels, such as finding (2) and section 4(c), are used to cite it.

   (a) FINDINGS.—The Congress finds that—

   (1) there is pending before the United States Court of Federal Claims, a suit by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation against the United States, in which the Tribe seeks to recover damages under the "Fair and Honorable Dealings" clause of the Indian Claims Commission Act (Act of August 13, 1946, 60 Stat. 1049), and in which, although the matter is in dispute, the potential liability of the United States is substantial;

   (2) the claim alleges that the United States has since the construction of Grand Coulee Dam used Colville Reservation land in the generation of electric power, and will continue to use such reservation land for as long as Grand Coulee Dam produces power; and that the United States has promised and undertaken to pay the Tribe for such use and has not done so;

   (3) the United States, after years of litigation, has negotiated a Settlement Agreement with the Tribe, signed by the Department of Justice, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Department of the Interior. The Settlement Agreement is contingent on the enactment of the enabling legislation; and

   (4) the Settlement Agreement, approved in this Act, will provide mutually agreeable compensation for the past use of reservation land in connection with the generation of electric power at Grand Coulee Dam, and will establish a method to ensure that the Tribe will be compensated for the future use of reservation land in the generation of electric power at Grand Coulee Dam, and will settle the claims of the Tribe against the United States brought under the Indian Claims Commission Act.

   [...]

   (c) SETTLEMENT.—Consistent with the negotiated terms of the Settlement Agreement, the United States shall join in the motion that the Tribe has agreed to file in Confederated Tribes v. United States, Indian Claims Commission Docket 181-D, for the entry of a compromise final judgment in the amount of $53,000,000. The judgment shall be paid from funds appropriated pursuant to section 1304 of title 31, United States Code, and is not reimbursable by the Bonneville Power Administration.

   Write an evaluation. Each student answers this question in 250-350 words: "How well did later decisions (the 1948 recreation area, the hatcheries Source 1 describes and the 1994 settlement) respond to the costs of the original decision to build Grand Coulee Dam?" Students may argue that the responses were strong, partial or weak. The answer must apply at least two of the four criteria, cite all three sources, use one number from Tables 1-2 or the sources, and respond to one counterclaim.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Exit ticket. "Name one cultural characteristic and one environmental characteristic of the upper Columbia that are different today because of decisions made in the 1930s. For each, name the decision."

   Teacher note on the sources. Source 2 links the dam to the "Works Projects Administration," while Source 1 says the dam was authorized under the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the People page for Lake Roosevelt (NPS) says the dam was built by the Public Works Administration (PWA). Source 1 and the People page fit together: the PWA was created under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Source 2's name matches no New Deal agency; it blends the PWA with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a separate work-relief agency created in 1935 and renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939. Use the mismatch to show corroboration: when sources differ on a detail, historians check which account other sources support. Also ask students what kind of evidence Source 3 is, and what it can and cannot prove.

   Teacher note on balance and respect. Students and their families may hold different views about large dams and water projects, and the sources show both benefits and losses. Keep the class focused on evidence and criteria, and accept well-supported evaluations that reach different verdicts. Refer to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation by the name used in the law, and treat tribal nations as present-day governments, not only as part of the past. Source 3 records only the claim the law settled, the use of reservation land to generate power; it is not a full account of what the dam meant to tribal nations. The Lake Roosevelt History & Culture page (NPS) says the dam transformed the river into Lake Roosevelt, "forever changing salmon runs upstream," and Source 1 names the "loss of anadromous fish above the dam," the fish that tribes gathered to harvest at Kettle Falls (Table 1). Present these losses as documented facts, and keep evaluation questions about the decisions, not about whether the losses happened.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which of these is a political decision?

   AA farm family decides to grow apples instead of wheat BA power company raises its price for electricity CA state legislature votes to pay for a new canal DA worker moves to a city where jobs pay more

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which economic decision would most directly change an environmental characteristic of a place?

   AA rancher switches dry pasture to irrigated alfalfa BA store owner extends her shop's opening hours on weekends CA bank lowers the interest rate on car loans DA school district raises the pay of its teachers

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to paragraph 1 of Source 1, why does Grand Coulee Dam fund three hatcheries?

   ATo supply fish to restaurants in Washington BTo raise fish for sale to buyers in Canada CTo meet a requirement of the 1994 settlement DTo make up for the fish lost above the dam

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 1 says the project irrigates "approximately 680,000 acres," but Reclamation's History page for the dam says "approximately 600,000 acres." What is the best way for a student to use these figures?

   AUse the larger figure, since it must be the more recent one BReport both, cite each, and note that they differ CAverage them and report 640,000 acres as exact DLeave out the acreage, since it is unreliable

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 3 is a federal law. Which statement best describes the kind of evidence it gives?

   ACongress records the claim and approves a negotiated settlement BA court rules that the United States broke its promise to the Tribe CThe Tribe describes in its own words what the dam meant to its people DThe Bureau of Reclamation reports the cost of building the dam

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to paragraph 1 of Source 2, about how many people had to leave their homes because of the reservoir?

   AAbout 300 BAbout 1,100 CAbout 3,000 DAbout 11,000

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 2, what choice did land, home and business owners face?

   AStay in their homes and accept flooding BSell their property or see it condemned CMove to farms the government gave them DKeep their land on the new reservoir shore

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which detail in paragraph 2 of Source 2 shows a community changing its location but not disappearing?

   AMany smaller towns broke apart and scattered BMost town sites vanished under the waters of the reservoir CVisitors can find old steps and sidewalks DMarcus and Kettle Falls relocated and lasted

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to finding (2) of Source 3, what did the Tribe's claim allege?

   AThe U.S. used reservation land for power and did not pay BThe dam flooded the Tribe's fishing sites at Kettle Falls CThe dam's farms took water from the Tribe's own fields DThe Tribe was never asked whether the dam should be built

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to section 4(c) of Source 3, what was the amount of the compromise final judgment?

    A$53,000 B$5,300,000 C$53,000,000 D$530,000,000

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Use Table 2. By about what percent did Grant County's population grow from 1990 to 2024?

    AAbout 47.7% BAbout 91.2% CAbout 191.2% DAbout 49,959%

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Use Table 2. In which year shown was Grant County's share of the state's population the highest?

    A1940 B1960 C2010 D2024

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    On Diagram 2, Grant County's index for 2024 is about 714. What does that mean?

    AThe county gained about 714 people after 1940 BThe county grew by about 714 percent in the years after 1940 CThe county had about 714,000 people in 2024 DThe county had about 7.1 times its 1940 population

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which question best applies the response criterion to the 1994 settlement in Source 3?

    AHow many miles of the river valley did the new reservoir cover? BWhich groups paid for the dam's construction in the 1930s? CDoes the settlement reduce an earlier cost, and for whom? DWill the reservoir still exist a century from now?

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using Sources 1 and 2, name one political decision and one economic decision connected to Grand Coulee Dam. For each, name a cultural or environmental characteristic it changed, and cite the source and paragraph.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Source 1, paragraph 3, says the project "resulted in the creation of vast wetlands and riparian areas." Explain how a single decision can make an environmental characteristic better in one place and worse in another, using Sources 1 and 2.

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17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Source 3 was passed in 1994, more than 50 years after the dam was completed in 1941. Explain how Source 3 shows what D2.Geo.5.9-12 means by decisions "throughout time."

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18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Use Table 2. Calculate the percent growth from 1940 to 2024 for Grant County and for Washington State. What can these numbers tell you about the effects of the Columbia Basin decisions, and what can they not tell you?

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19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Apply the distribution criterion. Using all three sources, explain who gained from the Grand Coulee decisions and who bore costs.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    A classmate says: "The dam decisions changed the river's environment, but they did not really change anyone's culture." Write a rebuttal with two pieces of evidence.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to D2.Geo.5.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.