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 he 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. John M.

Kemble, a local historian and explorer, has spent countless hours in the field researching and working with museums, historians, private collectors, and news archives to carefully reassemble the history of Banks Lake and the Upper Grand Coulee with rarely seen photographs and images from the past. The Images of America series celebrates the history of neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country. Using archival photographs, each title presents the distinctive stones from the past that shape the character of the community today. Arcadia is proud to play a part in the preservation of local heritage, making history available to all.