Off again.... to Richland's REACH Museum en route to Sun Lakes

After the Good Sam rally, we stayed on at Wine Country RV Resort for a couple more days. By Monday noon, as the rally-goers continued their exodus there were only a few of us left, scattered throughout the park. It was quiet and peaceful, a stark contrast to the hubbub of the past weekend.

We went walkabout into town, found a grocery store that actually carried flax seeds which we ran out of (they are not easy to find), popped into the well-stocked quilt store in town, and just generally relaxed. I caught up with my blog posts, and also some house work. Being on the road still requires home care, like vacuuming (so glad to have a central vac on board), basic cleaning, and laundry(so glad to have a washer/dryer on board). It takes a lot less time to get housework finished in a 36- foot coach. 

And that leaves more time to sew. I brought along my scrap strips and have been working on two scrappy child quilt tops. The set up with the new desk works really well. And at the quilt store I found a perfect border fabric for one of the quilt tops.

This morning we moved on. With the continuing good weather at this time of year, we decided to loiter in Eastern Washington and revisit a couple of places that we have enjoyed previously. First one on the list is Sun Lakes, located at the base of Dry Falls, close to Coulee City. But first we made a quick stop along the way in Richland, first at Costco and then at the REACH Museum.

The museum is named after the 51-mile long Hanford Reach, the only remaining free-flowing section of the Columbia River.  (All the rest of the US section of the Columbia River is backed up behind 11 dams and no longer flows, or is tidal at the river mouth). The REACH museum was well worth the stop and focuses on two major exhibits. The first is about the geology and history of the Columbia Basin with its fascinating topography and wildlife. 

The second is an exhibit about the Manhattan Project and Hanford Nuclear site about 30 miles north of Richland.

Two very diverse topics but interrelated, each a legacy to the Columbia River and Tri-Cities region.

  

The Columbia River has always been a major player in the history of the region.  

The river was the source of nourishment for the native Indians who fished its waters for salmon, dating back 10,000 years ago, and continues to support the diverse fauna and flora of the region.   

In more recent history, the river opened up the region to initial settlement by whites, after Lewis and Clark first made their voyage of discovery along its banks in 1805. When gold was discovered in British Columbia and Idaho in the late 1850's, the river brought gold seekers upstream from Portland to White Bluffs where they joined the pack trains heading north. Cattle ranchers who supplied the miners with beef arrived shortly after that, followed by farmers who began to tame the dry soil for cultivation.

Then in the 1930's, the river played yet another important role that still has repercussions today.   President Roosevelt’s New Deal, in creating employment during the Depression, put into action an earlier proposal to build dams on the Columbia River to provide flood control, hydroelectricity and irrigation to the region.  This led to the construction of federal hydro-power dams including the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams, which generated growth in industry, created jobs and raised the standard of living in the Pacific Northwest. 

In 1939 Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt advising him of the feasibility of a nuclear chain-reaction in uranium which would generate enormous amounts of energy that could be used in a bomb, and that Germany was likely working on a nuclear device.  Roosevelt told his military advisers to take action, and after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, development of a nuclear bomb became a priority, named the Manhattan Project.

In December 1942, a team of scientists, engineers, and Army Corps staff established five main criteria for the Manhattan Project's plutonium production.   The project required a remote sparsely populated area to maintain secrecy, with abundant water for cooling and maintaining reactor temperatures, and plenty of reliable power.  The little town of Hanford, population 300, along the Columbia River was selected and in February 1943 under the Second War Powers Act, the US government began acquiring land and the residents were ordered to leave. The town was condemned and the buildings razed in preparation for the Manhattan Project.  The Hanford Site produced the nuclear material for the uranium-based “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the plutonium used in the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki. 

What impressed me is how quickly the facility was organized and built, without plans or blueprints, and how quickly people were hired and moved into Richland, which was selected as the site for the federally sponsored planned community that would house Du Pont employees and their families. Construction of homes began in April 1943 with more than 4,700 homes completed by June 1945. By the end of the war, Richland had grown from a farming community of 250, to a population of 16,000.  It must have been a logistical nightmare to house and feed the population explosion. And to keep the whole endeavor a secret. 

More information is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

After WWII work at Hanford continued to escalate during the Cold War.  The nuclear arms race was the primary concern, and the environmental consequences were secondary.  The result was significant radioactive contamination of the soil and groundwater, and releases of contaminated waste into the river.  

The other main gallery in the museum celebrates the now protected wilderness area known as the Hanford Reach National Monument. The area has survived in pristine state – an unexpected benefit of WWII security requirements for the Manhattan Project that allowed no public access.  The exhibit describes the history of the area, the ice age floods that carved the coulees and scablands, the fauna and flora of the region, and the ongoing environmental restoration of the site. 

Today, the repercussions of the Manhattan project continue. The Hanford site is undergoing a major ecological clean-up to eliminate the radioactive waste that resulted from the manufacture of plutonium.
It seems fitting that the museum is located on a hill overlooking the Columbia River. 

The sculpture in front of the museum looking out across the Columbia River