Remember when Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe visited Wenatchee's Rocky Reach Dam?

The year was 2009. I remember the buzz in the community when word got out that Mike Rowe visited the Rocky Reach Dam for an upcoming segment of the popular show “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel.

If you’ve never seen or heard of the show, here's the general premise: Mike Rowe would stop by and perform difficult, strange, and sometimes downright disgusting “dirty jobs” with the workers. During Mike’s visit to the Wenatchee Valley, he not only toured our Rocky Reach Dam but also got to take in a Wenatchee Wild hockey game at the Town Toyota Center.

I was there. I looked back and saw him that night. I wish I had taken a picture of him.

Early in my time with KW3 (maybe 2008?), my boss took the entire radio programming staff on a team-building tour of the Rocky Reach Dam. I had to put on a helmet, safety glasses, and steel-toed boots.

Mike Rowe did, too. 

He tasted life in a Chelan County PUD turbine at Wenatchee's Rocky Reach Dam.

Here's what IMDB documented about the first airing in 2009.

Mike and a couple co-workers cram themselves into a crawl space to perform the impossibly awkward job of replacing the seals on a turbine at a hydroelectric dam. Next Mike changes the oil on the turbine but first he has build a work platform while perched precariously on a wobbly beam. Then, after a little fish surgery, Mike does what he does best, digs through poop. -IMDb

Now, a disclaimer.

I’ve attached a video of the Dirty Jobs Rocky Reach Dam episode on the Discovery Channel. The quality is a bit iffy…but you can see who Mike Rowe interacted with at the dam. Enjoy some nostalgia for Wenatchee from the late 2000s

You might catch a rerun of this episode on Max.