Among the fastest-growing towns in the United States, Pasco’s location straddling the confluences of the Snake and Yakima rivers with the mighty Columbia has made it known as the gateway to the rich irrigated lands of the Columbia Basin. This clean, safe, and friendly city of just over 42,000 enjoys the cultural, sporting, and artistic richness of the Tri-cities and the superb outdoor recreation opportunities of the vast Columbia Basin.
Location
Located at the confluence of the Columbia, Yakima and Snake Rivers in south-eastern Washington State, Pasco is the county seat for Franklin County.
Kennewick and Richland are within 7 miles, Yakima is 71 miles, and Spokane 127 miles from Pasco.
Geography
At an altitude of just under 400 feet on the banks of the Columbia River, Pasco is surrounded by mostly flat, dry scrub-steppe country.
Jobs
With population growth of over 30% in the past five years, Pasco is the fastest-growing town in Washington State and the fifth fastest in the nation. Like its neighbors Kennewick and Richland, Pasco has historically been focused on the Hanford site, but more recently agriculture and technology have become of almost equal importance to its economy.
The city’s importance as part of the Tri-cities retail hub has also increased. Major employers like the Washington Public Power Supply System, and engineering and technology companies including Westinghouse, Boeing, ICF Kaiser and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draw on the area’s highly educated and skilled workforce. Food production, including asparagus, onions, potatoes, apples, cherries and wine grapes, provides much employment and attracts such well-known companies such as Lamb Weston and Iowa Beef Processing to the Pasco area.
Housing
Pasco has experienced staggering growth in recent years, with over 1000 new homes built in 2004 alone. Large tracts of land have been developed for single-family homes, with first-time homebuyers the primary target. The housing market is extremely active, and multi-family homes, older neighborhoods, new neighborhoods, high-end riverside suburbs, large manufactured home neighborhoods and country living are all available at very reasonable prices.
Recreation
Pasco enjoys its share of the Tri-cities’ 21 recreational parks, picnic and sporting facilities, and many miles of trails, and it also offers access to several wildlife refuges, like the 15,000 acre McNary Wildlife Refuge, which each year attract stupendous congregations of migrating birds. In fall and winter there is wonderful viewing of vast numbers of wildfowl as they fly to nearby feeding grounds, while throughout the year McNary becomes a temporary home to many species of ducks and geese, herons, pelicans, song-birds, and even bald eagles. Its waterways also offer excellent fishing for largemouth black bass, catfish, crappie, steelhead, and trout.
McNary Wildlife Refuge is only one of many State Parks and countless other areas near Pasco that offer excellent and upland game and other hunting. Pheasants, quail, chukor partridges and many waterfowl species abound, and there are mule deer and smaller game to be hunted as well.
At the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers, Sacajawea State Park is a 284-acre park which is named for the Shoshonee Indian woman guide of the Lewis and Clark expedition and marks the furthest upstream on the Columbia River that the adventurers explored. There is Lewis and Clark information and a display of Native American art at the Sacajawea Interpretive Center, and a boat launch, river beach, and children's play area.
Golfers make the most of the more than 300 days of sunshine enjoyed by the Tri-cities area, and with ten excellent local courses there is always somewhere to go to enjoy a game. A favorite of Tri-city golfers, Sun Willows Golf Course is a public 18-hole, par-72 course that has been operating in Pasco since 1963. Its rolling fairways framed by mature trees and large undulating greens offer an enjoyable golf experience for any skill level. Meanwhile, with facilities that include a driving range with floodlights for evening play, chipping and putting greens, and an 18 hole par 3 course, Pasco Golfland is one of the top teaching, practice, and recreational golf facilities in the Pacific Northwest.
Special Attractions/Events
In the last full weekend of July the Tri-Cities' Water Follies attracts crowds of 60,000 spectators to the largest weekend event in Eastern Washington, coming to participate in what is probably the region’s premier annual festival. The three-day event has been a tradition for 31 years, and with scores of hydroplanes racing at 200 miles per hour, overhead aerial demonstrations involving some of the nation's top pilots, and lots of family entertainment on land. It’s not hard to see why.
The Pasco area is steeped in the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and there are several places where the heroic exploits of the intrepid explorers are regularly re-enacted. The Lewis and Clark Trail State Park is one such place. Set in 37 acres on the banks of the Touchet River, this park is a rare example of old-growth forest amidst the surrounding arid grassland. As well as the re-enactments, there are other interpretive displays on the lives of the original homesteaders in the area, and on local flora and fauna. The park also provides excellent fishing for rainbow and brown trout.
Like all the Tri-cities, Pasco is a community with a strong agricultural heritage, and this is wonderfully exemplified in its Farmer’s Market, the largest and most diverse in the region. Open from May through November, the market is a great opportunity to buy fruit and vegetables fresh from the farm, sample local home-made jellies and preserves, and stock up on freshly baked bread and delicious pastries in a friendly country market environment.
Interesting Facts/Historic Buildings and Places
In 1968, remains of the Western Hemisphere’s earliest known human inhabitants, who lived near Pasco ten thousand years ago, were found at the Marmes Rock Shelter near Lyons Ferry and Palouse Falls. The shelter has since been inundated by a hydro dam, but the bones were relocated and reburied on a nearby hill. The region’s earliest residents apparently thrived in the mild climate along the banks of the Columbia, Yakima and Snake Rivers, and for several millennia they harvested the area's abundant fish supply and other food resources.
The explorers Lewis and Clark came to the Pasco area in 1805, camping at a site now commemorated by Sacajawea State Park on October 16th, 1805, and marking the beginning of increasing exploration of the area by trappers, traders, and gold prospectors. In 1886 the county seat was established in Pasco, newly named by railroad construction engineer Virgil Bogue after a railroad he had worked on in the Andes Mountains near Cerro de Pasco in Peru.
Since that time Pasco’s prosperity has developed through transportation, trade, and agriculture, but the basis of all these has been the great rivers of the region. The completion of Grand Coulee dam in 1941 and the subsequent irrigation of surrounding arid lands enabled the area to become one of the main food-producing areas in the Pacific Northwest and brought stability and prosperity. And it was because of the dam, and the vast resource of hydroelectric power and cold Columbia River water that the area was selected for the huge atomic energy program at Hanford, without which Pasco and the Tri-cities would not have enjoyed their current social and economic prosperity.
- NUMBER1EXPERTS™ 
