A frozen dam solved a big problem

On the east side of the Columbia River, several landslides had already occurred, burying equipment and threatening lives, slowing down the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Reporters watched the 200,000-cubic-yard hillside for the next story, and in July 1936, the story broke that a solution had been found: the WMAK engineers planned on freezing the slide area.

They did it with a refrigeration pla...