Banks Lake

Every year, Banks Lake is visited by thousands of tourists from all over Washington State and beyond for recreation. People fish, boat, swim, hike, and camp around Banks Lake, a 27-mile equalizing reservoir created for the Grand Coulee Dam as part of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. However, even before Banks Lake, the Upper Grand Coulee was a vibrant, inhabited land. Bits and pieces of the fragmented history often surface; there were orchards and seemingly endless fields of golden wheat. Filled with ranches and farms, cattle roamed freely. Stories of highways, railroads, and towns now under the waters of the equalizing reservoir are waiting to be discovered. This book pulls back the waves of Banks Lake and the layers of time to reveal the lost and forgotten history that was inundated with the waters of the Grand Coulee Dam.