Grand Coulee Dam the generators and also travel across the main dam span (otherwise closed to the public) as the formerly used glass elevator is indefinitely out of service. Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote some of his most famous songs while working in the area in the 1940s. 1941 after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie and his family moved north to Oregon on the promise of a job. Gunther von Fritsch was directing a documentary about the Bonneville Power Administration's construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, and needed a narrator. Alan Lomax had recommended Guthrie to narrate
Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam (not including the Third Powerplant) to be $168 million; its actual cost was $163 million in 1943 ($ in dollars). Expenses to finish the power stations and repair design flaws with the dam throughout the 1940s and '50s added another $107 million, bringing the total cost to $270 million ($ in dollars), about 33% over estimates. The Third Powerplant was estimated to cost in 1967, but higher construction costs and labor disputes drove the project's final cost in 1973 to ($ in dollars), about 55% over estimates. Despite estimates being exceeded, the dam became an economic success,