Grand Coulee Bridge Grand Coulee Bridge The Grand Coulee Bridge, or Columbia River Bridge at Grand Coulee Dam, is a steel thru cantilever truss bridge built in 1934-1935. It carries Washington State Route 155 across the Columbia River immediately below Grand Coulee Dam, near the city of Grand Coulee, Washington. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The bridge was built to transport heavy equipment across the Columbia river during the construction of the dam, and thereafter as permanent highway bridge. As such, it was designed to carry a heavier load than was typical. The bridge is supported
Grand Coulee Dam in the newspapers, stating exploratory drilling at the Grand Coulee site found no granite on which a dam's foundations could rest, only clay and fragmented rock. This was later disproved with Reclamation-ordered drilling. Ditchers hired General George W. Goethals, engineer of the Panama Canal, to prepare a report. Goethals visited the state and produced a report backing the ditchers. The Bureau of Reclamation was unimpressed by Goethals' report, believing it filled with errors. In , President Warren G. Harding visited Washington state and expressed support for irrigation work there, but died a month later. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, had little