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The Tri-Cities in Washington State

© Jerri Brooker

Trekking to the southwest Washington cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick on the internet is a real joy for me; I find some intriguing internet sites that add to what I know about the Tri-Cities area of our state. I think you'll enjoy visiting these sites.

For starters, when I think of the Tri-Cities I think of Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the place that produced plutonium that powered "Fat Man," one of two nuclear bombs the United States built for World War II. I think of "reservation radiation," and all the tales I have heard about Hanford. The insight I gain as I take a look into the history of the place is phenomenal.

Before we get too much into Hanford, though, get a mental picture of the Tri-Cities area at this site where you can take a tour around the neighborhoods of these well-known Washington cities created after the first settlement was founded in the area in 1863. Be a visitor here and increase your knowledge a tad more. Read about the Sports Hall of Fame Project or taking a jet boat to the Hanford Reach, the last free-flowing section of the Columbia River. I found a business at this site that even cuts mazes in corn fields! Check it out!

What still stands out in my mind as I tour these sites is a powerful entity in this area, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Let me digress a little.

This past spring I took a trip to the Southwest area of the United States. While on that trip we went to Los Alamos, the hidden city, (Los Alamos actually means "the cottonwoods") which perches high atop the rim of the Pajarito Plateau in New Mexico. This beautiful place is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the headquarters of the Manhattan Project: the government's secret effort to develop the first atomic weapons prior to World War II. What a beautiful place, Los Alamos, that overlooks the Rio Grande Valley. The Sangre de Cristo (southern end of the Rockies) Mountains are on one side of the mesas; the Jemez Mountians are to the west and the valley is below. Breathtaking.

While at the Bradbury Science Museum at Central and 15th in downtown Los Alamos, we saw the casings of "Fat Man and Little Boy," the two World War II atomic bombs. The sight of those bomb casings stuck with me the rest of the vacation.

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