Biohazard Cleanup Near Uptown Richland, WA

Richland is a city in Benton County, Washington, located at the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia Rivers, and with Pasco and Kennewick it forms the Tri-Cities metropolitan area.

Richland's townsite was established in 1905 and named for Nelson Rich, a state legislator and land developer, and the town was incorporated on April 28, 1910.

In 1943 the U.S. Army evicted Richland's roughly 300 residents after condemning the town and surrounding land for the Hanford nuclear site, part of the Manhattan Project.

Richland was rebuilt as a government-owned bedroom community for Hanford workers, and its population exploded from about 300 in mid-1943 to 25,000 by the end of World War II in August 1945.

Many of Richland's wartime homes were assigned by letter-coded floor plans based on family size, and these surviving prefabricated houses are still known as 'alphabet houses.'

After the federal government relinquished its land, Richland was re-incorporated as a chartered first-class city on December 10, 1958, and the last government-owned home was sold to its resident on May 16, 1960.

The 2020 census counted 60,560 people in Richland living in 24,327 households.

Richland has been home to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory since 1965, and many residents now work on the environmental cleanup of the Hanford Site, whose last production reactor shut down in 1987.

Washington State University Tri-Cities was founded in northern Richland in 1989 and anchors the city's Tri-Cities Research District.

Richland High School's sports teams are called the Bombers, complete with a mushroom cloud logo, and the city's nicknames include 'Atomic City' and 'City of the Bombers.'