Caption
Grand Coulee Dam construction.
Number
1009
Prompt
Water begins to flow over the spillway of the dam, creating a cascade of animated white lines. The power lines in the foreground subtly hum with energy, indicated by small, radiating lines. The clouds in the sky drift quickly. In the margin on the left, a farmer lifts up his shovel and stands straight up but doesn't leave the margin. In the margin on the right, some electrical sparks fly off from the wires on the transmission tower.
Body
The Grand Coulee Dam is one of the largest concrete structures in the world and a testament to the ambitious public works projects of the 1930s and 40s. This stamp, issued in 1952, celebrates not just the dam itself, but the broader mission of the Bureau of Reclamation to irrigate arid lands and provide hydroelectric power to the Pacific Northwest. The design of the stamp, with its focus on the massive scale of the dam and the transmission lines extending from it, emphasizes the transformative impact of this engineering marvel on the development of Washington State and the entire region.