Banks Lake is a 27 mile long reservoir located near Coulee City in central Washington. Part of the Columbia Basin Project, Banks Lake occupies the northern portion of the Grand Coulee, a formerly dry coulee near the Columbia River. The coulee was formed by the Missoula Floods during the Pleistocene epoch. The lake is formed by two low earth-fill dames, the Dry Falls Dam and North Dam thereby keeping the water in the Grand Coulee and creating Banks Lake. The was named after Frank A. Banks, the construction supervisor at the Grand Coulee Dam. The area around the lake provides a ton of recreational opportunities with hunting and fishing. Also, with Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park to the south of Banks Lake, there's opportunity for boating as well as camping in the area. Along the eastern shore of the lake heading towards Grand Coulee, you will pass Steamboat Rock State Park. Speaking of Grand Coulee, the town of Grand Coulee is the home of the famous Grand Coulee Dam.
In September 2002, a group of 19 concerned geocachers scheduled a meeting after hearing that the Washington State Parks was considering banning geocaches in the 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 a bite-sized GeoTour consisting of 20 GeoTour caches 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 getting back out on the road while 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.
GEOTOUR UPDATE
The WSGA's 20th Anniversary GeoTour will end on December
31, 2024, at
11:59pm PT.
You will only have until this date and time to find the
geocaches, post all of your logs for the digital souvenirs (if qualified), and
submit all of your passports of unique codes for the geocoins (if qualified).
There will be no exceptions.