The following paragraphs are intended to give summary to what may seem to be an unwieldy, spiderweb of history. While most histories will provide a narrow and specialized focus, this history does the opposite. Using the changing landscape as a broad tool, this essay attempts to show the effects of social interactions as resultant in physical products, the major product in this essay being the Grand Coulee Dam. Because of the broadness of topic I chose to summarize here.

Through the last three introductions, I have used the Donald Worster article "Hydraulic Society in California" as a framework for sectioning the history of the Grand Coulee Dam area. The first section, Early History, operates outside Worster's scaffolding because the earliest human interactions did not rearrange the natural ecosystem. The Native Americans did use the river to their benefits, but they did not employ the technology or innovation necessary to actually reform the river. In the advent of white explorers, their technologies, such as guns, medicines, and fertilizers were at a stage that could inevitably change the ecosystem in a new pace. The technologies of steam engines, siphons, and canals then arrived in the turn of American settlement. This is the "diversion plateau" as the river could actually be diverted to a degree. However, it was not until the higher level of "centralization and capture of power" that the inhabitants could fully create an apparatus of complete diversion. Without the aid of the federal government during the New Deal, the autonomy of Rufus Woods and the Columbia River Development League could not have been turned over and the system of dams could not have been constructed. The "centralization" fits into Worster's structure as the work of the government and the "capture of power" as the "private economic interests...exercised domination" over the apparatus. The private economic interests were in this case the Bonneville Power Adminstration who sold the hydroelectricity and the farmers who benefitted from the Bureau of Reclamation's irrigation. In addition, the men who actually built the dam and the powerhouses had economic interest in Grand Coulee Dam. The final stage of this framework is the "infrastructure trap" which Worster defines as the "involution, wherein the ever-more-complicated apparatus became a straitjacket that prevented a genuine choice among alternative futures". Truly, at this point, undoing the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam is not an option. Even in light of all the problems incurred by its presence and resulting effects, the Grand Coulee Dam will probably not be breached. It may not be breached in time to save the dwindling salmon population. The repercussions of its breaching would be massive flooding, the actual environmental destruction caused by wasted concrete, and the loss of now-necessary hydroelectric facilities. This is the framework that most involves the actual assimilation of technology into a natural ecosystem.

Another framework is simply the oft-used conundrum of unanticipated social effects. One can not predict the future especially when the future holds ideas far out of the present realm. When European explorers traveled to the New Worlds, they did not know there would be societies already formed. Moreover, biology was too premature to realize the horrendous spread of disease they would incur. Before the idea of an ecosystem was broached, Anglo-American fertilizers infiltrated it. In fact, ecosystems may never have been understood until one was first destroyed. Like Hanford or the DDT regions, biologists had to study the passage of poison through the environment before understanding how it operated. While the dam was constructed as a solution for a laundry list of seemingly otherwise incurable problems, its resultant effects stretched the limits of the human understanding in 1933. The region of the Columbia River Valley faced the hard reality of the simply natural limits of rainfall. As DeVoto coined, the "simple arithmetic" of aridity rendered the region unsuitable for agriculture. The blindness caused by the few years of above average rainfall tricked settlers into a lifestyle they could not maintain. Today, environmental scientists often study reasons not to settle and build on floodplains, but before long-range pumping could be created, the only way to have water was to settle on it. This created the insoluble desert choice of dying or thirst or drowning. In light of this framework it is easier not to make a "whipping post" of our ancestors. Unfortunately, evidence shows that the depletion of salmon population was not only easily conceptualized, but also predicted and ignored. The social effects extend beyond the environment. Native American treatment throughout the last 200 years was deplorable. Only recently have Americans begun to pay back, only in cash, the damage that has been done over and again.

Another framework for viewing the Grand Coulee Dam is as a product of the West. One can hardly write about the American West and not mention Frederick Jackson Turner. His 1893 thesis The Significance of the Frontier in American History left an indelible mark on Americans for decades to come. Taking off at the 1890 census that declared the entire United States settled, he rationalized the moving frontier as the definitive feature of Americans. In the beginning of the 20th century Americans saw the nation as fully developed. That only significantly changed with the introduction of the automobile necessitating new roads, and the introduction of the New Deal that provided the means of building a new national infrastructure. Moreover, Turner defines the West as the metaphysical site of democracy. It is like a hand of the government always checking the actions of the East. It is the more rational, more democratic, more individualistic part of the United States, constantly questioning the conservative nature of the rest. During the early 20th century Turner's ideas must have seeped into the minds of leaders in Washington. The Grand Coulee Dam was a figmented structure for years before it came to term. The Far West had to lead the United States to a new liberal level, pushing for a freer, less regulated state. Moreover, the construction of such a massive undertaking had metaphoric significance, too. They were truly conquering a new frontier in science, technology, and systemized regional planning. The Grand Coulee Dam became the new 'City Upon a Hill' for everyone East to admire.

The fourth framework is based on American paradigms of nature, land, and real estate. As mentioned in the beginning of the essay, Leo Marx, in his The Machine in the Garden makes the argument that the machine will inevitably encroach on Henry Nash Smith's paradigmatic garden. While The Tempest seemed to be an appropriate application to the early history of the United States, at once a paradise and a howling desert, its worth only lasts so long. The ideology of taming the wilderness into a controlled garden changed dramatically with the influx of technology. Soon Americans means of transforming the wilderness became industrial and massive. Moreover, an American can hardly say "the West" without preceeding it the repeated adjective "wild". The West became a new wilderness to tame. Moreover, because of its aridity, it required the use of technologies to literally water the desert into a garden. First, the railroads arrived, blowing smoke through the vast expanses of landscape. The railway lines ended in a strange desert. As in The Tempest the inhabitants of the West were mesmerized by the absence of human touch and were simultaneously imbibed with the spirit to change it. The Grand Coulee Dam became the embodiment of the Machine in the Desert. It was the means to alter the landscape enough to continue the garden myths. It also subscribed to the Jeffersonian ideal of a nation of republican yeoman farmers. Literally and physically, the Grand Coulee Dam stands in the middle of the wildest and strongest river in the United States. Almost single-handedly the Grand Coulee Dam halted the 1,214 miles of water that raged for millions of years before. The Columbia's anger had been soothed and the desert's thirst had been quenched.

The final framework is that of democracy's interworkings and failures to live up to its values. Many consider the construction of a mechanized Columbia River, and even the American usurption of the river in the 19th century, to be a result of the structures and ideologies in the national government. If the federal government forms an agency, the agency's main goal then is self-presevervation. If the agency does nothing, it will be eliminated. However, for all its ideology of equality, the government's agencies do not represent the American people equally. It is not that participatory democracy is a lie; but instead, that some Americans, by the nature of political power, educational awareness, and leisure time allowed by income, never have a fighting chance. For example, because the Native Americans in 1805 were not considered American citizens, their "vote" or voice had no bearing. Just because they lived within imaginary lines of the nation made them and their communities susceptible to American law and policy. Another example is the Environmental Protection Agency, which did not exist in 1933. Because of this, the engineers at Grand Coulee Dam never had to make up a Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a requirement for all constructions today. Had they been forced to make an EIS perhaps more foresight would have gone into the future of the salmon, or the ecosystem at Hanford, or the erosion of riverbeds due to agriculture. Just because the government did not have an EPA means that those Americans, or the land itself, was not fully represented in law and policy. Again, when Sam Hill went to Congress to receive funding, he was instructed to focus on the hydroelectric aspect of the project. Irrigation seemed bootless at the time but because Congress seemed willing to agree to a power project, it went ahead. Each agency and company that works on the Columbia River has different priorities. The Army Corps of Engineers is primarily concerned with navigation and flood control. The BPA works with electricity only. The US Bureau of Reclamation provides the region with irrigation. Many dams are run by Public Utility Districts that try to balance all these issues while subscribing to regional decision-making. The combined efforts of these agencies have built the interworkings of this magnificently trained river. However, because many efforts of the government have failed to fully represent all Americans or all Americans' values, there is a call to improve the systems of representation, federalism, and policy-making.