Hanford & White Bluffs: The Towns Erased for the Bomb, Washington

For decades before World War II, the land along this bend of the Columbia River was farm country. White Bluffs began in 1861 as a ferry crossing for miners heading to the British Columbia gold rush. Hanford followed in 1907. By the 1930s, both towns had orchards of pears and apples, vineyards, banks and schools. Long before the settlers came, this was tribal land. The Wanapum lived in the nearby Priest Rapids Valley, and the Yakama, Umatilla and Nez Perce peoples fished and gathered along the river. In March 1943, the federal government arrived with a secret project and eminent domain. Hanford residents received a 30-day notice dated March 9. In White Bluffs, people had anywhere from three days to two months to leave. About 1,500 residents of the two towns and nearby settlements were relocated, and the Wanapum lost access to their valley. Homes and orchards were burned to clear the land. In May 1943, about 177 sets of remains were moved from the White Bluffs Cemetery to a cemetery about 30 miles away. On the cleared ground, the Manhattan Project built B Reactor, the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor. It produced its first plutonium in November 1944. Hanford plutonium was used in the Trinity test and in the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Today the Hanford Site is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup in the country. Of the old towns, the White Bluffs Bank and Hanford High School still stand. Since 2015, they’ve been part of Manhattan Project National Historical Park.