About the Richland, Washington Area 

Remarkable for having the highest number per capita of PhD-qualified residents of any city in the world, Richland is known for its resident scientists and technicians working in one of the country's most important nuclear research laboratories, and for its long association with the Hanford nuclear program. But there is much more to this thriving city of 43,500 people. With its satellite neighbor West Richland (population 9500) Richland enjoys the fabulous climate, with more than 300 sunny days per year, wonderful outdoor recreation choices, and vibrant artistic and cultural life of the Tri-cities area. As clean, safe, and friendly as a traditional country town, Richland is only a 2 – 3 hour drive from several major cities of the Pacific Northwest.  

Location
Richland is located at the confluence of the Columbia and Yakima Rivers in southeastern Washington state. 

Kennewick and Pasco are within 10 miles, Yakima is 62 miles, and Spokane 130 miles from Richland. 

Geography
Richland is situated at approximately 350 feet above sea level in the Columbia River Valley. Irrigation allows much of the surrounding semi-arid, shrub-steppe environment to be extensively cultivated for crops and livestock.

Jobs
Richland has a highly educated and skilled workforce, evidenced by the fact that the city has more residents with a Ph.D. per capita than any city in the world.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Reservation dominates Richland and the region in terms of its size, number of employees.  

Other major employment areas are agriculture and technology, with companies like Battelle Memorial Institute, Bechtel, and Duratek Federal Services providing services to the Hanford site, Energy Northwest generating nuclear power at a nearby reactor facility, and Framatome ANP fabricating nuclear fuel. Another significant employer is ConAgra/Lamb-Weston, which processes potatoes and other foods.  

The mild climate has also allowed the development of a wine industry which has become one of the fastest growing segments of the economic base. Many new wineries have been developed in recent years, challenging traditional California wineries for quality and variety. 

Housing
Richland’s housing is generally divided by the Yakima River with the government alphabet houses built in the 1940's and 1950's in north Richland and more modern homes built from 1990's to the present in south Richland. All types of housing are available, including large and small older homes, new and mature neighborhoods, golf course neighborhoods, planned neighborhoods, and country living, and of course some areas have beautiful river views. Average new home prices are around $275,000, while the average market price for pre-owned homes is just under $200,000. 

Recreation
Several of Richland’s municipal parks front on the Columbia and Yakima Rivers, giving access to boating, water skiing, fishing, kayaking and water fowl hunting, and there are plenty of opportunities for these pastimes, along with upland game and deer hunting, hiking, and other outdoor recreation within a few minutes’ drive of the city. Snow skiing is available too, not much more than an hour away. 

West Richland has about 30 acres of developed playgrounds, parks, and playfields and more neighborhood parks are being developed in residential areas throughout the City. The popular Bombing Range Sports Complex, for example, has three baseball fields with backstop, scoreboard, dugouts, and fencing; 4 soccer fields with goals, shed, and kicking wall; a football field with goals and scoreboard; practice areas for baseball, soccer, and youth football, and many other facilities. 

The Badger Mountain Centennial Preserve, located on the edge of Richland, provides a spectacular view of the Tri-Cities and the Columbia and Yakima rivers. A mile-long trail, climbing 1000 feet above Richland, allows visitors to enjoy this shrub-steppe area, which retains most of its original native vegetation. 

Richland’s high number of sunny days per year makes golf one of its most popular sports, and there are three golf courses designed for varying levels of skill within the city itself and seven others nearby, including the Meadow Springs Country Club, recognized as Eastern Washington's finest full-service private country club. Formerly a NIKE-Tour and Buy.com tournament course its 18 championship holes offer fun and challenge for players of all skill levels, site. Its clubhouse offers fine and casual dining or banquets for up to 250 and there are a swimming pool and tennis courts. 

Special Attractions/Events
No visit to Richland is complete without seeing The Reach, a new visitor and heritage center situated on 50 acres of Columbia Point, at the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers, and bordering the Yakima River delta and wetlands, a rich habitat for many birds and animals. The Reach provides a gateway to the Hanford Reach National Monument and an opportunity to learn about the unique history of this area from the Ice-Age through the Atomic Age. 

The longer-established Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology in Richland is a museum and science center which tells the larger story of the Columbia Basin and surrounding region. Using interactive exhibits it shows the development of irrigation for agriculture in the region, and surveys the history of power generation, including hydro, wind, and nuclear, for which the Columbia Basin is renowned. 

For a different kind of outing, the Richland area offers excellent tours to local wineries. The Tri-Cities boasts more than 100 wineries within a 60 mile radius, producing some of the finest wines in the country. They range in size from the Hogue Winery which produces almost half a million cases of wine a year, to tiny specialty vintners, some of whom produce internationally acclaimed red wines. Over 20 wineries are within a 15 minute drive of Richland, and three of these have won special renown.  

A short drive East of Richland in the Lyons Ferry State Park, the burial site of ten thousand year-old human bones originally found in 1968 in the Marmes Rockshelter, can be reached via a half-hour hike. Close by is the Lyons Ferry Fish Hatchery, where visitors can enjoy walking through the fish rearing ponds and hatchery, while further upstream on the Palouse River the highest waterfall in Washington State, plunges 200 feet into an enormous pool carved into the ancient volcanic rock. The setting is magnificent, and trails through the dry landscape and dark rocks reach the top of the falls and into the gorge below.  

Interesting Facts/Historic Buildings and Places
On October 17, 1805 Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition visited the native American village of Chemna, where for many centuries the Wanapum, Yakama and Walla Walla people had harvested the vast runs of salmon that entered the Yakima River below the village. He was the first white man most of the villagers had seen. Today that village site is called Columbia Point, in the city of Richland. 

Until the early 1940’s Richland was a quiet farming town of less than a hundred people, but in 1942 the US Army purchased 640 square miles –an area half the size of Rhode Island-along the Columbia River, evicting the residents of Richland as well as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and Hanford, and turned the town into a bedroom community for workers on the top-secret Manhattan Project nuclear weapons program. Within two years there were over 25,000 people in the area. Richland became a federally controlled Atomic Energy community, with access restricted to those with special security clearance. Mail was postmarked in Seattle and many addresses were deliberately misleading. 

Soon after the end of the war another period of expansion began, fueled by the beginning of the Cold War. People moved to Richland by the thousands to find work, with many at first living in a huge tent and trailer city in North Richland. Eventually thousands of pre-fabricated houses were brought up-river from Seattle by barge. Known as “alphabet houses”, each of the narrow range of floor plans was identified by a letter of the alphabet. Most of these homes, many since remodeled, remain in Richland. 

Although the last production reactor was shut down in 1987, the city still contains many other reminders of its World War Two and Cold War past. Richland High School's sports teams are called the Bombers and sport a mushroom cloud logo, while many city streets are named after US Army generals (Patton Street, MacArthur Street, Sherman Street, and George Washington Way), or have a nuclear theme, such as Einstein Avenue, Curie Street, Proton Lane, and Nuclear Lane. 

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