History

The Bonneville Dam was authorized by Congress in 1933 as part of the first wave of New Deal public works projects. By 1934, the US Army Corps of Engineers had mobilized several thousand workers at the Columbia River Gorge site, where basalt cliffs narrowed the river between Oregon and Washington. The project combined two goals: flood control and hydroelectric power generation, which the Pacific Northwest desperately needed for industrial expansion and rural electrification. President Roosevelt dedicated the dam on September 28, 1937, calling it a symbol of what democratic government could build.

The powerhouse and ancillary structures reflect a deliberate aesthetic policy of the New Deal era. Federal architecture of the 1930s was expected to project permanence and civic pride. The Bradford Island Powerhouse — the original generating facility, located on a small island in the Columbia River — received a full Art Deco treatment: horizontal banding, stepped parapets, decorative concrete panels with geometric motifs, and large windows set in rhythmic bays. The building was not merely functional; it was designed as a monument to what collective national effort could achieve.

The dam’s opening transformed the Pacific Northwest economy. Cheap hydroelectric power attracted aluminum smelters, pulp mills, and shipyards to the Columbia Basin — industries that proved critical to the Allied war effort after 1941. The aluminum produced using Bonneville power went into aircraft frames; the shipyards it energized built Liberty ships for the Pacific theater. Additional powerhouses were added after the original, expanding the dam’s generating capacity significantly over subsequent decades. The dam has been in continuous operation ever since, one of the longest-running federal hydroelectric projects in the country.