Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By Bus
Yakima Transit
(509/575-6175,
www.ci.yakima.wa.us/services/transit/
)
serves the Yakima area, including the municipal airport, with
Monday-Saturday service.
For local tours, contact
Accent! Tours
(509/575-3949 or 800/735-0428,
www.accenttours.com
)
.
To get out of town or across the country, hop aboard
Greyhound
(509/457-5131 or 800/231-2222,
www.greyhound.com
)
from its Yakima sta-
tion (602 East Yakima Ave.). Greyhound also stops in Toppenish (at the Branding Iron, 509/865-3773) and Sunnyside (13th St. and Hwy. 12, 509/
837-5344).
The sun-scorched confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers marks the end of a straight-shot journey along Highway 14 and the Columbia
Gorge. Here you'll find an industrious trio of cities—Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland—at the rivers' junction. The Tri-Cities are book-ended by
the Yakima and Walla Walla Valleys, surrounded by bountiful fields of potatoes, grains, fruits, and veggies, much of which is exported to Pacific
Rim countries.
So how does a collection of agricultural towns grow into a metropolitan area with more than 120,000 people? The answer lies north of Richland
at Hanford Site, birthplace of the Manhattan Project and home to the decommissioned nuclear munitions plant whose cleanup has funneled more
than $12 billion into the local economy. Lucky visitors can get an up-close look at selected portions of Hanford site during limited tours offered
by the Department of Energy.
Hanford Site
In a cloak of secrecy that not even the workers who built it could see through, Hanford's Plant B reactor was the birthplace of the atomic age.
This was the first large-scale plutonium production reactor ever to be built, creating a supply chain of radioactive materials that made it possible
to create the first atomic bomb and Fat Man, the bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, contributing to the end of World War II.
Since being decommissioned in 1968, Plant B has been meticulously scrubbed as a part of a decades-long, $1 billion-per-year cleanup of the
entire Hanford Site nuclear complex. Though this historic reactor is still contaminated with radiation, visitors can't be harmed simply by coming
into contact with objects there.
For several years now the Department of Energy has offered selected road tours around limited areas of Hanford that include a walking tour of
Plant B (
www.hanford.gov/publictours
). In order to book a slot, you must be an adult U.S. citizen who can plan well in advance. Online bookings
fill up extremely quickly once the DoE announces the tour schedule. The only way to snag a free ticket is to regularly check the website. Plant B's
availability may soon be opening up, though. In 2008 the building was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places, and DoE officials are
currently working on plans to open the reactor to more public visits.
TRI-CITIES
