The nation's largest environmental clean up project, Hanford Nuclear Reservation is home to 54 million gallons of radioactive waste - a tremendously complicated and expensive legacy of the Cold War and the problems of nuclear energy. Though the more obvious and politically relevant issues surrounding Hanford pertain to environmental remediation and public health, the historic significance of the place has also played an important part in site planning since 1996.

Cleaning the Slate

Though publicly underacknowledged, the natural and cultural history of the place may, in the end, be key to a remediation strategy tied to the adaptive reuse of the facility as an income generator for the area.

In June of 1942, Hanford was the last site selected for the Manhattan Project, a fast track response to President Franklin Roosevelt's $85 million allocation to atomic weapons development. The effort produced a far flung collection of remotely located secret research and production sites around the country, where scientists conceived technologies that would drastically change the character of war and peace worldwide. The nuclear bomb quickly ended World War II, and raised global fears that mass annihilation was a real and ever present threat. In the wellspring of postwar optimism, nuclear energy's civilian applications quickly gained popularity.

The environmental and cultural impacts of this trend are still being sorted out by government agencies, historians, film makers, and groups keen on remembering and memorializing the history of the arms race, the Cold War, and its role in American life in the twentieth century. The global importance of nuclear research, and the scale of environmental devastation wrought by nuclear production have arguably overshadowed the complexity of Hanford's rich history.

The Priest Rapids Valley and the Columbia River were integral to the early development of the area. For centuries, the region was sparsely populated by Native Americans with ancient ties to the land. Attracted by its agricultural promise, white settlers moved into the area in the 1860s.

The physical landscape was also integral to the area's history prior to Hanford's construction. The US Army forcibly removed over 1500 people from the area to construct the secret facility and figured largely into the federal government's selection of the site for nuclear weapons research. Hanford's remote location, local energy sources, and easy access to water met the government's siting criteria. Clear, cold water reduced the heat generated by nuclear fission within the reactors. Bonneville and the Grand Coulee dam supplied electrical energy for site operations.

The connection between the Wanapum tribe and the natural environment is longstanding and deep; the Columbia's salmon are integral to the tribe's spirituality. When the federal government negotiated the acquisition of the area, the tribe was most interested in making sure they had enough fish.

Material possessions were secondary to the tribe, which was relocated wholesale, their villages abandoned as they left them. Fifteen years passed before the Wanapum were allowed access to tribal burial sites. In 1997, the Department of Energy approved a decades old request and allowed Wanapum Elders and other tribal members annual access to traditional sacred sites and cultural places.

Hanford's construction had an impact on Euro-American settlers as well. The Second War Powers Act authorized the Secretary of War to acquire land for military purposes. Land acquisition began in February of 1943 at the Hanford site and displaced many farming communities still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The news came swiftly, as did the farmer's relocation. According to oral histories, some of the residents never mentally recovered from the shock of losing their farms to the government and secret operations.

Short term and long term compensation for losses suffered by all relocated residents is a complex and controversial piece of Hanford's story, as is the transformation of the landscape and local economy from agricultural to industrial. The creation of Hanford involved the demolition of farmhouses and the cutting down of orchards to create a desert tabula rasa to make room for new scientific frontiers.

History Remade and Undone

Construction of Hanford's nuclear facilities began a new chapter in the story of the place. What had once been open farmland became a closed, and heavily guarded government facility hemmed in by ubiquitous fencing and barbed wire garlands. Skilled and unskilled workers and engineers were hard to come thanks to war-induced labor shortages, even though the government offered wages 50% higher than average.

Hanford's vast facilities required extensive infrastructure for the labor force who built and operated the plant. Many of the operating facilities were in construction as the research directing the design of these buildings was still in development. Within two years, the Hanford site included three reactor complexes, two chemical separations complexes, a fuel manufacturing and research and development center, a construction camp and an employee village.

The monumental size, speed, and complexity of the effort was impressive to those who lived on site, and legendary to the very few outside its fenced perimeter who knew Hanford even existed.

Only one percent of Hanford's 50,000 plus resident workers knew the true purpose of the site's operations, that is, developing the atomic bomb. As with production-oriented workplaces, the scope of the extensive operation was a point of pride.

During the war, a posting tacked to a barracks wall quantified the extent of operations by tabulating goods consumed in a given week, day or month: 30,000 doughnuts in one day produced by a machine that made 18,000 doughnuts per hour, 700 cases of Coca-Cola a day, 12,000 gallons of beer consumed each week, 12,000 turkeys for Thanksgiving (or to be more specific, 22 tons of turkey, 12 tons of ham), and 16,000 packs of cigarettes sold each day.

The Hanford facility was made up of tens of thousands of people insulated from the rest of the world, working toward a single industrial purpose. Though politically loaded, the form of the place (minus the reactors and related structures) shares much in common with mining towns and other temporary places conceived around extractive industry. The relationship between the land and the work was similar - productivity was a primary concern, and superceded environmental sensitivity. War department directives made worker safety a priority, but much of the technology and impacts of nuclear energy were then new and hard to predict.

The scope of operations and the social climate of the homeland war effort made an impact on the many people who worked at Hanford in its earliest days. This story has been told, but not in its entirety. Critical pieces have been overlooked, like the role of women who comprised over 15% of the workforce, as well as the work and experiences of African Americans and Hispanics segregated from white workers during the war. The story of labor and the construction and operations of the camp and its infrastructure are now beginning to see some light in possible interpretative plans for the nuclear facility.

Time is running out for any preservation strategy that would save physical reminders of the Cold War. In the 1990s, Congress directed the Department of Energy to focus on the demolition of surplus properties associated with this bygone era, and work toward environmental restoration of sites associated with this past. The clean up process has resulted in the demolition of many sites, which presses the question of how and what to preserve of this complicated past. Without immediate concerted planning, there may not be enough historic fabric left to tell the story of the Cold War, or to commemorate its historic importance.

Making the Most of the Past

While written history can separate out environmental history from other histories, like the farming communities predating the site's construction, Native American histories and traditions, the story of World War II, the history of nuclear science, women's history and others, the practical application of these many overlapping and complex stories is not easy.

How will Hanford's history play a part in its future, and the government's plans for comprehensive cleanup?

Hanford's toxicity, and the ways in which the government deals with it, will affect the character of the historic environment. In this regard, Hanford is the ultimate fixer-upper, and a compelling test of preservation practice. How the many agencies and heritage groups engaged in Hanford's stewardship work together toward common aims will test the preservation community, and provide a great opportunity to expose preservation's benefits to new audiences beyond those immediately engaged in the remediation project.

A recent strategy for Manhattan Project planning taps into a Bush administration initiative, Preserve America, which was launched earlier this year (2003). The Executive Order (#13287) seeks to "provide leadership in preserving America's heritage by actively advancing the protection, enhancement, and contemporary use of the historic properties owned by the Federal government" and to "promote local economic development and vitality through the use of historic properties in a manner that contributes to the long-term preservation and productive use of those properties."

One of Hanford's primary heritage advocates, the Atomic Heritage Foundation, recently (June 2003) drafted a report to Congress outlining two strategies for preserving Hanford's heritage that save the government a considerable amount of money and track with Preserve America's objectives. The plan treats Hanford as one of many connected to the Manhattan Project - all of which are considered within the preservation plan funded by a grant from the Department of Energy.

This report is the most recent in a number of planning pieces including a Hanford Site Historic District history generated by the Hanford Cultural and Historic Resources Program, also under the aegis of the Department of Energy. The history report complements the preservation plan in that it contextualizes existing resources, and helps identify which remaining buildings, structures, and landscapes associated with Hanford are most historically significant.

Hanford's B Reactor joined the Washington State and National Registers in 1992. This is a small part of a comprehensive evaluation of Manhattan Project sites over the past decade. Within the context of related sites nationwide, Hanford's importance lies its mission to produce plutonium by irradiating uranium fuel rods and then extracting the plutonium for use in the "Fat Man" bomb. Major themes include fuel manufacturing, chemical separations, and plutonium finishing. After evaluating 1100 properties, 527 were found to be contributing to the historic district. Of these properties, 190 were recommended for individual documentation.

The Atomic Heritage Foundation has engaged the local Tri-Cities community around heritage and preservation planning objectives - a strategy often used when developing local preservation plans. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has also participated in this effort. In an official February 2001 report, the ACHP stressed the need for "creative and innovative approaches" to preservation. These would, they noted, most likely come from outside the Department of Energy.

They also recommended the DOE:

-- work with the National Park Service to explore the establishment of a National Park Site;

-- partner with State and local governments to promote heritage tourism and marketing for the purchase and adaptive reuse and rehabilitation of Hanford properties;

-- partner with other public and private organizations to manage, rehabilitation, and steward the properties into the future;

-- consider incentives for contractors working on Hanford properties that would underscore preservation goals.

As of yet, no officially recognized park or national monument recognizes the history of the Manhattan Project. Creating a national park requires a special assessment which is budgeted within the AHS's plan. Another piece of the plan recognizes the need for a more inclusive understanding of the Manhattan project that incorporates the stories of women and African Americans, and recommends a $750,000 appropriation to inventory existing oral histories and gather new ones. The AHS notes that as a part of the site's cleanup, many objects associated with the story of the place have been thrown out - these too are important to telling Hanford's story. The plan calls for the curation and storage of significant artifacts.

These measures to identify and preserve the most important resources at Hanford will provide the foundation for heritage tourism opportunities.

The AHS suggests two possible packages, one looking to preserve only what is absolutely essential to Hanford's story, and the other, an enriched and expanded treatment that more fully explores the history in a new interpretation center. One million dollars would be spent to support interpretation of the site's tribal history, and to protect and preserve significant cultural resources at Hanford. The site currently includes three state-recognized archaeological districts; two of these are listed on the National Register.

The plan as presented by the AHS considers Manhattan Project sites around the country, and includes the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University, all of which are connected to the nuclear research and testing associated with the secret project.

The Allure of Secret History

Oak Ridge currently attracts visitors interested in seeing the "Secret City" developed there as a part of the Manhattan Project. Might Hanford hold the same draw for heritage tourists?

The secretive nature of the project and the Cold War in general carries somewhat lurid connotations. The legacy of somewhat known but unknown scientific experimentation and nuclear research has sparked pop culture icons like Godzilla (child of irradiated waters contaminated by nuclear weapons testing), various and sundry supersized film creatures, and freaks of nature like the Hulk (beefed up by gamma radiation).

Hanford's real history warrants telling, even if the economic engine of the site's preservation stems from tourism sparked by sensational appeal. If funding comes forward for the site's preservation and interpretation, visitors attracted by Hanford's sub rosa character would most likely be drawn into the more substantive realities shaping its many histories.

Unlike Europe, where mass destruction significantly altered landmark buildings, urban form and public memory for generations, memorials to World War II on American soil tend to be somewhat abstract. Destruction happened somewhere else; our losses were mostly personal. Public memory of World War II and the bomb comes in the form of designed memorials, oral histories, books, documentaries, veterans' buildings, or special days marking key events in history. These methods of storytelling and remembering are very different than the experience of actual spaces where important events took place.

Hanford's remoteness and natural environment are integral to its World War II and Cold War history, and to contemporary understanding of what happened there. The expansiveness of the site demonstrates the scope of operations there, even if many of the specific structures associated with these operations are torn down.

For some, the history of the place is personal and local. For some, the nuclear facility is merely background to ancestral land. For others, Hanford is a memorial. For most, the place provides a monumental object lesson for future generations.

View last month's Preservation & Environment article

Back to Top