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Benton County -- Thumbnail History

Benton County is located in the southeastern portion of Washington state at the confluence of the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers. The land, part of the semi-arid Columbia Basin, lies in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains and is naturally dry. But the soil is fertile and supports native plants such as bunch grasses and sagebrush. This vegetation in turn supported the deer and elk that Native Americans hunted, and later, the cattle and sheep of white settlers. Irrigation began in the 1890s with water drawn from the Columbia River. Farm crops then flourished, including wheat, alfalfa, grapes, strawberries, and potatoes. That same Columbia River was one factor that caused the federal government to choose Benton County for a secret wartime plant, the Hanford Works, that would develop plutonium for the atomic bomb. After the war, Congress created the Atomic Energy Commission, which took over operation of the 600-square-mile Hanford Atomic Reservation, and work continued on government projects that included the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity. Today the county's two main industries are nuclear power and agriculture. Wineries are growing in importance.
File 5671: Full Text >

Bretz, J Harlen (1882-1981)

J Harlen Bretz was a geologist whose ideas about the origins of the "scablands" of Eastern Washington evoked ridicule when he first proposed them, in the 1920s, but eventually revolutionized the science of geology. Bretz argued that the deep canyons and pockmarked buttes of the scablands had been created by a sudden, catastrophic flood -- not, as most of his peers believed, by eons of gradual erosion. It was a bold challenge to the prevailing principle of "uniformitarianism," which held that the earth was shaped by processes that can be observed in the present. Since a flood of the almost Biblical proportions envisioned by Bretz had never been seen, it was dismissed as a throwback to the pre-scientific doctrine of "catastrophism." Not until the 1940s did other geologists begin to present new evidence supporting the flood theory. Satellite imagery in the 1970s provided the final vindication. Bretz had the satisfaction of living long enough to see his once heretical ideas become the new orthodoxy. In 1979, at age 96, he received the Penrose Medal, geology's highest honor. He later reportedly told his son: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over" (Smithsonian).
File 8382: Full Text >

Columbia National Wildlife Refuge

The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project did more than turn half a million acres of arid Eastern Washington into lush farmland. It also created an enticing stopover for millions of migrating birds. Land once dominated by sagebrush and dust now sparkles with reservoirs. Seepage from canals and pipes has given rise to marshes, bogs, and ponds. Drainage ditches, designed to carry excess water from farm fields, function as creeks in a landscape redesigned by hydraulics. These manufactured lakes and artificial wetlands form the heart of the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, a 30,000-acre haven for more than 200 species of birds and waterfowl, including many that previously bypassed the region entirely.
File 7459: Full Text >

Franklin County -- Thumbnail History

Franklin County is situated in south-central Washington state. The Columbia River forms its western border and the Snake River forms the southern and eastern borders. The natural shrub-steppe landscape is composed predominately of bunchgrass and sagebrush. There is little rainfall, but the soil is fertile and can grow anything with adequate moisture. Native Americans long hunted game and fished for salmon in the area. White prospectors traveled through in the 1850s on their way to the gold rush in British Columbia and some stayed to raise sheep and plant orchards. Then the railroads came, securing the county's future. The county was created in 1887, and named for Ben Franklin (1706-1790), the American statesman. Franklin County's first permanent settlements were railroad stations. The towns grew steadily as irrigation methods improved after the completion of Grand Coulee Dam. Agriculture remained the basis of the economy. With its strategic position on the Columbia River, Pasco became the county's largest city and the seat of its government. Pasco and its sister cities across the Columbia River, Richland and Kennewick, are collectively known as the Tri-Cities. The county boomed during World War II years, when the Hanford Nuclear Reservation brought large numbers of workers into the region. The population has grown steadily and in recent years Franklin County became the first Hispanic-majority county in the Pacific Northwest. It is also the region's fastest growing county.
File 7452: Full Text >

Grant County -- Thumbnail History

Covering a total of 2,660 square miles, Grant County -- located in the Columbia Basin region of central Washington -- is the state's fourth largest county. It was initially carved out of neighboring Douglas County in 1909. The original (and much larger) Douglas County had been created in 1883 when the Washington Territorial Legislature formed Lincoln and Spokane counties from a larger Spokane County, then separated the new Lincoln County into Lincoln and Douglas Counties only a few days later.
File 8010: Full Text >

Hanford Reach National Monument

The Hanford Reach National Monument -- one of the most important wildlife refuges in Washington state -- is an inadvertent legacy of the United States' nuclear weapons program. Lands within the monument originally served as a buffer around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. For nearly half a century, Hanford was the primary source of plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal. The need for secrecy and security kept the surrounding area free from development. Wildlife flourished, even in the shadows of the reactors that produced, along with plutonium, some of the most toxic waste in the world. The reservation itself remains off limits to the public, while it undergoes the most complicated and costly cleanup in history. But it is encircled by an ecological treasure trove, including the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River, the most valuable salmon spawning grounds left on the river, and the largest remnant of undisturbed shrub-steppe habitat in eastern Washington.
File 7438: Full Text >

Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, WSU Prosser

Washington State College (later WSU) established the Irrigation Experiment Station at Prosser in 1919. The Washington Irrigation Institute recommended such a program to study the problems faced by farmers, orchardists, and ranchers in the dry central part of the state. The station employed scientists from the college in Pullman, who partnered with scientists from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In the early years a road was built and water was pumped from the Sunnyside Canal. Crops such as potatoes, corn, and wheat were planted. The station contended with weeds and dust storms. It grew slowly, with budget cuts during the Depression years. Then World War II brought a huge demand for increased crop yields. The station's research in how to combat plant diseases and pests, how to irrigate, and how to increase crop yields led to increased crop production in the Columbia Basin and across the state. After the war, the station grew as funding came in from industry organizations such as the Washington Hop Commission. The Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, as it is now known, continues to provide support and research for Washington state irrigated agriculture. Irrigated agriculture, including grapes for the wine industry, wheat, hops, alfalfa, and apple and cherry orchards, comprises some 60 crops that add up to two-thirds of the state's agriculture and bring in some $3 billion in revenue annually. The center is one of the major employers of Prosser.
File 7684: Full Text >

Kennewick -- Thumbnail History

The site of Kennewick, on the west side of the Columbia River between the mouths of the Yakima and Snake rivers, has long been an ancient area of human habitation. The bones of the so-called Kennewick Man, dated at 9,200 years ago, were discovered in the city's riverbank. In more recent centuries, the site was an important gathering spot for various tribes, including the Umatilla, Wallowa, Wanapum, Nez Perce and Yakama tribes, who found abundant fish and often wintered in this relatively mild valley. Lewis and Clark came through in 1805 and 1806, followed by fur trader David Thompson in 1811 and Alexander Ross in 1812. White settlement came slowly because of the arid nature of the landscape, although stockmen drove cattle and horses through the area beginning in the 1860s. Kennewick first sprang into existence as a bustling railroad construction camp in 1884, when the Northern Pacific Railroad started laying track on the west side of the Columbia River. Yet Kennewick did not truly become established until 1902, after irrigation made farming possible. Kennewick -- along with Pasco, just across the Columbia River -- slowly grew into a small railroad and agricultural center with a population of about 1,918 by 1940. World War II changed the city forever, as thousands of workers poured into Kennewick and neighboring Richland to work on the Hanford Engineer Works, a secret project at nearby Hanford to build an atomic bomb. By 1950, Kennewick had more than 10,000 residents. The Tri-Cities -- as the Pasco-Kennewick-Richland area came to be called -- prospered through the second half of the twentieth century; none more than Kennewick, which became a transportation, agricultural, and technology hub. By 1980, Kennewick had grown into the largest of the Tri-Cities with a population of 34,397. As of 2007, Kennewick had an estimated population of about 62,250, making it the 12th largest city in the state.
File 8499: Full Text >

Kennewick Man

A man who lived more than 9,000 years ago along the Columbia River in what is now central Washington's Tri-Cities area became the center of worldwide attention and heated controversy following the 1996 discovery of his nearly complete skeleton at a riverside park in Kennewick. Area Indian tribes sought to rebury the man they called the Ancient One and revered as an ancestor. The federal government agreed, but eight anthropologists and archeologists sued for the right to study the skeleton, widely known as Kennewick Man. The case dragged on for years, attended by controversies over the handling of the bones, the burial of the discovery site, and statements by some plaintiffs, amplified and distorted in popular accounts, that appeared to suggest Kennewick Man was "Caucasian" and that Europeans may have reached America before Indians did. Scientific studies, ironically conducted by the government in an effort to support its decision to turn the remains over to the Indians rather than allow studies by the plaintiffs, showed that Kennewick Man was not like Europeans, Indians, or any modern peoples. In early 2004 an appeals court affirmed a prior decision that the plaintiff scientists would be allowed to study Kennewick Man.
File 5664: Full Text >

Marmes Rockshelter

The Marmes Rockshelter was one of the most significant archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest, yielding thousands of Stone Age artifacts -- along with the oldest human remains yet to be found in Washington state -- before it was inundated by the reservoir behind Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River in southeastern Washington. As the dam neared completion in the fall of 1968, Washington Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) used his political clout to secure an emergency appropriation to build a horseshoe-shaped enclosure around the rockshelter and an adjacent floodplain, hoping it would keep the area dry enough for archaeologists to continue their work. Unfortunately, the enclosure, built on a gravel base, filled as quickly as the main reservoir. A team of scientists from Washington State University hurriedly covered what they could with plastic and sand and then watched helplessly as the site disappeared beneath 40 feet of water in February 1969.
File 7970: Full Text >

McNary National Wildlife Refuge

The McNary National Wildlife Refuge, on the east bank of the Columbia River near its confluence with the Snake, was established in 1954 in an effort to compensate for the loss of wildlife habitat due to the construction of McNary Dam. With nearly 16,000 acres of marshes, mudflats, and shrub-steppe uplands, the refuge has become an important feeding and resting area for migratory birds and waterfowl. Its bays and shorelines serve as nurseries and passageways to spawning grounds for endangered steelhead, sockeye, and Chinook salmon. However, like other wildlife preserves on the mid-Columbia, McNary has proven to be a better haven for avian life than for fisheries. Indeed, one of the many threats facing the river's fish stocks today is the increasing population of American white pelicans and other predators, which now flourish in areas where they were once uncommon, drawn by McNary and other refuges.
File 7493: Full Text >

Moses Lake -- Thumbnail History

Moses Lake was not incorporated until 1938, yet for centuries Indians gathered camas roots and waterfowl eggs on its site on the shores of a large, shallow, wildfowl-rich lake near the center of Washington. The lake was named after Chief Moses (1829-1899), head of the local tribe variously called the Kowalchina, the Sinkiuse, or the Columbias. White settlement came late because the land of sagebrush and bunch grass was too dry for farming. Yet by the 1880s enough settlers had gathered to disrupt tribal hunting grounds. By 1910, settlers formed a small community named Neppel. Growth came slowly until irrigation from the lake was developed. In September 1938, the small community voted to incorporate under the name Moses Lake, pop. 302. In 1942, Moses Lake Army Air Base (later renamed Larson Air Force Base) was established. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the town boomed because of expansion of the air base and the new availability of irrigation water from the Columbia Basin project, enabling vast areas surrounding Moses Lake to be converted to farming. By 1950, the population was 1,679. Interstate 90, completed in 1959, passed the southern end of town and increased the town's prominence. Today (2007) the air base has been converted into a training center for Japan Airlines pilots. Big Bend Community College provides educational opportunities, and with a population exceeding 16,000, Moses Lake is the center of an important agricultural region.
File 8349: Full Text >

Pasco -- Thumbnail History

Pasco, one of the Tri-Cities along with Kennewick and Richland, sits at a watery crossroads on the Columbia River between the mouths of the Snake and Yakima rivers. The city was established in 1885 and incorporated in 1891, but was an important area of human habitation for almost 10,000 years. Many tribes fished and wintered in the flats along the Columbia at the mouth of the Snake. The Lewis & Clark Expedition camped at the site in 1805 and 1806, and reported that Indians gathered there in great numbers. Ainsworth, a town established near the mouth of the Snake in 1879 as a construction camp for the Northern Pacific Railroad, was Pasco's precursor. Once construction was finished, Ainsworth was dismantled and many buildings moved just a few miles up the Columbia to the newly established Pasco, which was designated as the new railroad division point. Pasco continued to be an important railroad and steamboat hub. With the coming of irrigation near the beginning of the 1900s, Pasco soon developed into an agricultural center. Until World War II, Pasco was the largest and most influential of what were later called the Tri-Cities. In 1943, the Hanford Engineering Project caused both Richland and Kennewick to boom. Pasco, with a Naval Air Station and other military installations, boomed as well, but it soon became known as the oldest and least affluent of the Tri-Cities. It is also became the most ethnically diverse, with substantial black and Hispanic populations. As of 2000, its Hispanic population had reached 56 percent, making it one of the few majority Latino cities in the state. Pasco is now the second largest of the Tri-Cities with a population of about 50,120.
File 8604: Full Text >

Prosser -- Thumbnail History

Prosser, the county seat of Benton County, is a town of about 5,000 people located in the far western part of the Eastern Washington county. The economy is based on agriculture including orchards, wheat, and wine grapes. Prosser is located on the Yakima River and was long home to Native Americans who lived and fished along the river. The Northern Pacific Railroad spurred its development in the 1880s. Prosser is home to Washington State University's Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center (opened 1919). Its courthouse, completed in 1926, was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
File 7900: Full Text >

Richland -- Thumbnail History

The city of Richland, one of the Tri-Cities along with Pasco and Kennewick, is on a site near the confluence of the Yakima River and the Columbia River that has been occupied for at least 11,000 years. People of the Wanapum, Walla Walla, and Yakama tribes fished and hunted in the area and established a small village called Chemna. The first white explorer to visit the area was Capt. William Clark (1770-1838) of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who canoed up the Columbia to the mouth of the Yakima. The first cattle ranchers arrived in the 1860s, but settlement did not begin in earnest until the 1890s when farmers began to irrigate in the lower Yakima Valley. One of those farmers was Nelson Rich, after whom the small settlement was named in 1905. The town was incorporated in 1910, yet for decades remained a tiny agricultural village. When World War II arrived, Richland had only 247 residents -- but then in 1943, the federal government acquired Richland (along with Hanford and a vast surrounding area) as part of secret wartime project to build an atomic bomb. By 1944, the population had boomed to 11,000, almost entirely workers on the Hanford project. By 1950, Richland had 21,809 residents and was nearly double the size of nearby Pasco and Kennewick. In 1958, the federal government relinquished ownership of Richland and it was incorporated as a first-class city. Today many Richland residents continue to work at Hanford, in environmental cleanup, yet Richland has diversified its economy into technology, medicine, education, and transportation. Its population as of 2007 was 45,070, and it is part of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area of 168,850.
File 8450: Full Text >

Steamboat Rock State Park

With a surface area of 600 acres, Steamboat Rock is something more than a "rock." A massive basalt butte, several miles long and 800 feet high, it looms like a battleship above Banks Lake, a manmade reservoir that fills the upper Grand Coulee in northeastern Washington. Steamboat Rock is the dominant feature in one of Washington's most popular state parks. It is also a key stopping point on a proposed Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail -- a network of sites in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, each bearing the dramatic imprint of the cataclysmic floods that swept across the region thousands of years ago.
File 7506: Full Text >

Treaty with the Yakama, 1855.

The Yakama Treaty was signed on June 9, 1855, by Isaac Stevens (1818-1862), Governor of Washington Territory, and by Chief Kamiakin (Kamaiakun) of the Lower Yakima, and other tribal leaders and delegates. (Note that in 1994 the Yakima Tribe changed its name back to its original form, the Yakama Tribe.) This file contains the complete text of the treaty.
File 8128: Full Text >