Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Pasco Pasco, WA

Pasco is a city in and the county seat of Franklin County, Washington, and forms the Tri-Cities metropolitan area together with Kennewick and Richland.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in the Pasco area on October 16, 1805, at a site now commemorated by Sacajawea State Park.

Northern Pacific construction engineer Virgil Bogue named the town after Cerro de Pasco in the Peruvian Andes, where he had helped build a railroad, and Pasco incorporated on September 3, 1891.

The 2020 census counted 77,108 residents in Pasco, living in 23,653 households.

Hispanic or Latino residents were a majority of Pasco's population in the 2020 census, numbering 44,350 people or 57.5 percent, and the city's median age was just 30.0 years.

Completion of Grand Coulee Dam in 1941 brought irrigation and large-scale agriculture to the Pasco area, while the Hanford Site drove rapid Tri-Cities growth in the 1940s and 1950s even as Pasco remained primarily a farm and railroad town.

Major food processors with Pasco operations include Lamb Weston, Reser's Fine Foods and Twin City Foods.

BNSF Railway's Pasco Yard, completed in 1955, is the railroad's largest classification yard in the Pacific Northwest.

The Tri-Cities Airport, the region's commercial airport, is located inside Pasco's city limits.

Columbia Basin College, founded in Pasco in 1955, is the largest public two-year college in southeastern Washington, enrolling nearly 7,000 students.