Hail Columbia
The 30 Year Struggle for Grand Coulee Dam
By George Sundborg
Back Cover Text

The Grand Coulee Dam is three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza which for seven thousand years held the title as man's largest structure.

The Grand Coulee Dam occupies more space than 150 million people of the nation, and weighs twice as much, dwarfing all other concrete or masonry structures.

The Grand Coulee Dam is so thick that four United States Capitols could be embedded in it.

The Grand Coulee Dam contains more than ten million cubic yards of concrete, enough to build a sixteen-foot highway from Seattle to Boston and back to Los Angeles.

The Grand Coulee Dam is the greatest producer of electric power on earth, having a capacity of 1,977,000 kilowatts.

The Grand Coulee Dam is fed from ice fields, glaciers, snow fields, springs and lakes, from sources in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and even the edges of Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah.

The Grand Coulee Dam is the biggest thing all in one piece ever built by man.

About the Author

George Sundborg is a product of the West about which he writes. Born in San Francisco in 1913, he has lived and worked in California, Oregon, Washington, and since 1938 mostly in Alaska. While the events which he relates in Hail Columbia were swirling around the state of Washington he lived there, working as a reporter, city editor and Associated Press correspondent at Hoquiam, toiling as bull cook and donkey engine fireman in a logging camp, working as engine room wiper on a tanker, and -- in days off -- climbing Mount Rainier, catching salmon in Puget Sound, and driving across the Cascades to see how construction was progressing on Grand Coulee Dam.

In Alaska Mr. Sundborg has served as researcher for the National Resources Planning Board, as General Manager of the Territory's Alaska Development Board, and from 1947 to 1951 as Executive Assistant to the Governor. Author of Opportunity in Alaska, a standard work on the Territory, he is now managing editor and co-owner of the Juneau Independent.

While passing through Spokane in 1945, he met James O'Sullivan who through the years had kept every letter, map, clipping and scrap of paper having to do with the struggle for Grand Coulee Dam. In these papers O'Sullivan and his friends as well as Presidents, Congressmen, and others caught "Hail Columbia". Sensing a great story, Sundborg put the pieces together and tells it in this book.