Bonneville Dam in the context of Bonneville Power Administration

The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to supply employment, stabilize buying power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves, one in 1933–1935 and another in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1935 and shut down in 1944.

The PWA spent over $7 billion on contracts with private construction firms that did the actual work. It created an infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and is still vital nine decades later. The PWA was much less controversial than its rival agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by Harry Hopkins, which focused on smaller projects and hired unemployed unskilled workers.

The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and water level.

The Kaplan turbine was an evolution of the Francis turbine. Its invention allowed efficient power production in low-head applications which was not possible with Francis turbines. The head ranges from 10 to 70 metres (33 to 230 ft) and the output ranges from 5 to 200 MW. Runner diameters are between 2 and 11 metres (6 ft 7 in and 36 ft 1 in). Turbines rotate at a constant rate, which varies from facility to facility. That rate ranges from as low as 54.5 rpm (Albeni Falls Dam) to 450 rpm.

Charles Linza McNary (June 12, 1874 – February 25, 1944) was an American Republican politician from Oregon. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1917 to 1944 and was Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. In the Senate, McNary helped to pass legislation that led to the construction of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and worked on agricultural and forestry issues. He also supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of the Great Depression. Until Mark Hatfield surpassed his mark in 1993, he was Oregon's longest-serving senator.

McNary was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1940, on the ticket with presidential candidate Wendell Willkie; both died in 1944, during what would have been their first term had they won. They lost to the Democratic ticket, composed of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for his third term as president, and Henry A. Wallace, by just under a ten-point margin.

The Bridge of the Gods is a steel truss cantilever bridge that spans the Columbia River between Cascade Locks, Oregon, and Washington state near North Bonneville. It is approximately 40 miles (64 km) east of Portland, Oregon, and 4 miles (6.4 km) upriver from Bonneville Dam. It is a toll bridge operated by the Port of Cascade Locks.

The bridge was completed by the Wauna Toll Bridge Company and opened in 1926 at a length of 1,127 feet (344 m). The higher river levels resulting from the construction of the Bonneville Dam required the bridge to be further elevated by 44 feet (13 m) in 1938 and extended to its current length of 1,858 feet (566 m). The Columbia River Bridge Company of Spokane, Washington, acquired ownership of the bridge in 1953 for $735,000 (equivalent to $8.64 million today). The Port of Cascade Locks purchased the bridge with $950,000 (or $10 million today) in revenue bonds, issued on November 1, 1961. The Port of Cascade Locks Commission owns and operates the bridge still today.