Richland () is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby cities of Pasco and Kennewick, Richland forms the Tri-Cities metropolitan area.
The townsite was established in 1905 and incorporated as Richland in 1910. The U.S. Army acquired the city and surrounding areas in 1943 for the establishment of the Hanford nuclear site, part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. Richland was transformed into a bedroom community for Hanford workers and grew to 25,000 residents by the end of the war. The city remained under control of Hanford contractors until it was re-incorporated as a city in 1958.
History
For centuries, the village of Chemna was at the mouth of the Yakima River. Today the village site is called Columbia Point. From the village, the indigenous Wanapum, Yakama, and Walla Walla people harvested salmon runs entering the Yakima River. Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition visited the mouth of the Yakima River on October 17, 1805.
Formative years In 1904–1905, W.R. Amon and his son Howard purchased and proposed a town site on the north bank of the Yakima River. Postal authorities approved the designation of this town site as Richland in 1905, naming it for Nelson Rich, a state legislator and land developer. In 1906, the town was registered at the Benton County Courthouse. It was incorporated on April 28, 1910, as a fourth-class city.
Population growth in Richland accelerated following the opening of a permanent bridge over the Yakima River in 1907 and a highway to Kennewick in 1926. A cable ferry to Pasco operated across the Columbia River from 1894 to 1931, when it was replaced by a modern bridge.
World War II
Richland was a small farm town until the U.S. Army purchased of land – over half the size of Rhode Island – along the Columbia River during World War II for the Manhattan Project. On March 6, 1943, over 300 residents of Richland as well as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and Hanford just upriver were evicted after a federal court order had condemned their properties for wartime use.
The army transformed Richland into a bedroom community for the workers on its Manhattan Project facility at the nearby Hanford Engineering Works (now the Hanford site). The population increased from 300 in July and August 1943 to 25,000 by the end of World War II in August 1945. All land and buildings were owned by the government. Housing was assigned to residents, and token rent was collected; families were assigned to houses or duplexes; single people were placed in apartments or barracks. Everything necessary was provided, from free bus service to light bulbs, and trees were planted in people's yards by the government. Much of the city was planned by Spokane architect Gustav Albin Pehrson and overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers. While dormitories and barracks were being built at the time, prefabricated duplexes and single-family homes are all that survive today. Because homes were allocated based on family size and need, there were a number of floorplans available. These were each identified by a letter of the alphabet, and so came to be known as alphabet houses.
Richland's link to the Army Engineers is suggested by its street nomenclature; many of the streets are named after famous engineers. The main street (George Washington Way) is named after the first president, who was a surveyor; Stevens Drive is named after John Frank Stevens, chief engineer of the Panama Canal and Stevens Pass; Goethals Drive is named after George W. Goethals, designer of the Panama Canal; and Thayer Drive is named after Sylvanus Thayer, superintendent of West Point and later founder of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. The rule is that if alphabet houses reside on a given street, they are named after an engineer or a type of tree.
Cold War era With the end of the war, the Hanford workers' camp, originally located north of Richland at the old Hanford town site, was closed down. Although many of the workers moved away as the war effort wound down, some of them moved to Richland, offsetting the depopulation that might otherwise have occurred. Management of the Hanford site and Richland itself was transferred to General Electric.
Fears that the Soviet Union's intentions were aggressive set off the Cold War in 1947. The capacity to produce plutonium was increased beginning in 1947. When the Soviet Union developed and tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949, the U.S. nuclear program was reinvigorated. A second post-WWII expansion began in 1950 due to the war in Korea. Richland's Cold War construction boom resulted in Richland's population growing to 27,000 people by 1952. Many of these people lived in a construction camp of trailers located in what is now north Richland. With time, these trailers were vacated and the core city grew. Others lived at Camp Columbia near Horn Rapids until the camp was closed in 1950. In 2005 several dozen houses built in the northern part of the core city during this boom were added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Gold Coast Historic District.
Transition to private property
In 1954, Harold Orlando Monson was elected the first mayor of Richland and traveled to Washington, D.C., to negotiate increased rights (such as private home ownership) for citizens in military cities across the country. The U.S. Congress passed a law the following year to mandate the transfer of Richland and Oak Ridge to local control within five years, spurring a new incorporation attempt. The federal government relinquished its land holdings in 1957 and sold the city's real estate to residents; the last home was sold on May 16, 1960. Most of the people lived in duplexes; senior tenants were given the option to purchase the building; junior tenants were given the option to purchase lots in a newly platted area of north Richland.
Richland was re-incorporated as a chartered first-class city on December 10, 1958, five months after residents voted in favor of self-governance as a city. Among the first additions to the new city was an expanded public library, which had been built by General Electric out of a Quonset hut. As part of the transition, large areas of undeveloped land became city property. Richland's financial dependency on the federal Hanford facility changed little at this time because Hanford's mission as a weapons materials production site continued during the Cold War years.
After the production boom
With the shutdown of the last production reactor in 1987, the area transitioned to environmental cleanup and technology. Now, many Richland residents are employed at the Hanford site in its environmental cleanup mission.
Richland High School's sports teams are called the Bombers, complete with a mushroom cloud logo. Some of the streets platted after 1958 are named after U.S. Army generals (such as Patton Street, MacArthur Street, Sherman Street, and Pershing Avenue) and after various nuclear themes (Einstein Avenue, Curie Street, Proton Lane, Log Lane, and Nuclear Lane). A local museum, the Reach Museum, tells the story of the cultural, natural, and scientific history of the Hanford Reach and Columbia Basin area; it replaced the now closed Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) in 2014.
Washington State University, Tri-Cities was founded in northern Richland in 1989, growing out of a former Joint Graduate Center which had been affiliated with the University of Washington, Oregon State University, and Washington State University. Richland is also home to Kadlec Regional Medical Center. Columbia Basin College's Medical Training Center is near Kadlec Regional Medical Center.
Government The city of Richland is a full-service city providing police services, fire protection, water utility services, solid waste services, electric utilities, parks and recreational facilities and services, maintenance of city streets and public facilities, and full library services featuring a state-of-the-art library operated by the city. The city pursues community and economic development and offers housing assistance.
The Richland Community Center is adjacent to Howard Amon Park, on the east side of the Columbia River. The building was designed by ARC Architects of Seattle, Washington. Many of its rooms have views of the park and Columbia River, which make it a venue for weddings and receptions, family reunions, birthday parties, business, and community meetings. The rooms are also used for a variety of general education and personal enrichment classes including courses in computer/technology, health & fitness, dance, arts & crafts, dog training, home & gardening, language lessons, and martial arts. The Community Center also serves as a gathering place for group recreation and gaming: cribbage, pinochle, bridge, pool, dominoes, and a host of other social activities are available to the public at large.
More recently, the Richland Community Center has hosted several important civic events including the Green Living Awards and the Fall Carnival. As of 2016, the city plans to rebuild city hall across Jadwin Avenue in the parking lot of the U.S. Federal Courthouse. The former city hall would be sold to eligible businesses.
Police services The City of Richland Police Department is composed of approximately 58 commissioned police officers and 15 support staff.
Economy
Technology After the end of World War II, Richland continued to be a center of production and research into nuclear energy and related technology. It has been the home of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) since 1965. One of the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory sites is located immediately north of Richland. Numerous smaller high technology business and expert consultants have grown up around the Richland Technology Center as well.
Preferred Freezer Services Warehouse Richland is home to the largest cold-storage facility on Earth—which is also one of the largest buildings on Earth by volume.
Major Employers Battelle Memorial Institute, operating PNNL Bechtel National Inc., building a waste vitrification plant Washington River Protection Solutions (a partnership of Amentum, Atkins, and Orano), controlling operations of the nuclear waste tank farms Washington Closure Hanford (a partnership of AECOM, Bechtel, and CH2M Hill), providing waste management and cleanup efforts, including decontamination and demolition (D&D) of facilities along the Columbia River Hanford Mission Integrated Solutions (a partnership of Leidos, Centerra Group, and Parsons) providing infrastructure and sitewide services Central Plateau Cleanup Company (a partnership of Amentum, Atkins, and Fluor), responsible for D&D of facilities on the site's Central Plateau EnergySolutions, providing services to the U.S. government Energy Northwest, generating nuclear power at a nearby reactor facility Framatome creating nuclear fuel Lockheed Martin Services, Inc., providing technology services The U.S. Department of Energy, which operates the Hanford Site
Agriculture Agriculture is important in the Richland area; the Tri-Cities area of the Columbia Basin grows excellent produce. Richland hosts an important food processor, Lamb Weston, which processes potatoes and other foods.