Summer Falls, Irrigation water is pumped up into Banks Lake from Grand Coulee Dam. Irrigation water stored in Banks Lake/Reservoir and then channeled South through the two Beacon Tunnels and over the Falls called Summer Falls. The water flowing over Summer Falls is dumped into Billy Clapp Lake and flows through canals to fertile farmland in the Columbia Basin.
Water flowed freely over this seasonal water falls until the early 1980’s when a new hydro power plant was built to capture this energy into electrical power. Today there is only a trickle of water flowing over the falls. If one were to be there when the power plant was shut down, then full amount of water will then flow over the falls.
In September 2002, a group of 19 concerned geocachers scheduled a meeting after hearing that the Washington State Parks was considering banning geocaches in state park system. Out of this meeting, the Washington State Geocaching Association (WSGA) was "born" with its core values of promoting geocaching as a fun, family-oriented outdoor activity that increases awareness and appreciation of the environment and our parks and trails, provide opportunities for participants to enjoy geocaching and to socialize with other geocaches, educate park systems and land managers about geocaching and its benefits, increase awareness and support of the geocaching through interaction with other outdoor groups and the public, encourage low-impact geocaching and promote stewardship of our natural resources, and support "Cache In Trash Out" activities to help maintain parks and trail systems.
In 2022, the WSGA turns 20 years young. To celebrate this milestone, the WSGA is hosting a 20th anniversary GeoTour. This GeoTour will give you the opportunity to travel to all corners of the Evergreen State while you search for 140 GeoTour caches. To make it easier to tackle such a large GeoTour, each of our 7 regional chapters will host 20 chapter-specific geocaches in bite-sized GeoTours with the entire GeoTour consisting of 140 caches. To learn more about our GeoTour, please visit the GeoTour page on our website which you can find HERE. We hope that you enjoy touring around Washington State. If you have any questions about our GeoTour, you can reach out to us via the contact tab on our website.
