The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Facebook Page Is More Entertaining Than You Think

In between innocuous updates on the Bonneville Dam and the proper way to wear a life jacket, the posts get more eccentric.

Bonneville Dam. IMAGE: Forest Service.

In the name-brand power rankings of federal government agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers falls somewhere between the Wage and Hour Division and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The maintenance of the city’s dams and waterways isn’t exactly thrilling to the general populace. The team responsible for the agency’s social media is well aware of this.

“We’re a government agency, and we’re not even a fun government agency, like the National Park Service,” says Christopher Gaylord, who manages the Facebook page for the agency’s Portland district.

It is perhaps that insecurity that causes Gaylord to get a bit…creative from time to time. In between innocuous updates on the Bonneville Dam and the proper way to wear a life jacket, the posts get more eccentric.

For National Doughnut Day, the district’s mechanical engineers posted thorough reviews of the design structures of pastries. After video of penguins wandering around the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago went viral, they proposed taking Herman, the sturgeon that lives in the nearby Bonneville Hatchery, on a tour of the dam—and photoshopped an image of what that might look like.

In late March, as the isolation jitters began to set in, the Corps of Engineers published a brief Q&A with the Bonneville visitor center’s “Area Closed” sign, asking how it might be feeling about standing guard on its lonesome.

“My presence serves the purpose of denying others a presence,” the sign said. “I guess it’s my cross to bear.”

“Humor is a gateway to a message,” says Gaylord. “Yeah, we’re a government agency, and we need to take ourselves seriously. But we’re playing in a space where people are mostly going to see memes.”

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