#63279: The Upper Grand Coulee

The Upper Grand Coulee is seen from the Million Dollar Mile section of the Coulee Corridor. 900 foot coulee walls contrast sharply with the waters of Banks Lake in this Ice Age Floods carved coulee. Here the power of ancient waters is graphically illustrated and reported in the strata of ancient basalt laid down by multiple lava eruptions from millions of years ago and hundreds of miles away. Steamboat Rock, a columnar basalt butte that was once an island in a rerouted Columbia River bed now towers 800 feet above the surface of Banks Lake.