New Hanford site tour offered

The story of the Hanford site prior to nuclear development is the focus of a new public tour offered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland office. “These tours will showcase the hard work, innovation, and perseverance of the families who lived here before the government’s occupation of the land,” said Colleen French, a National Park Service program manager. “Their struggles, accomplishments and, ultimately their loss of the land to the Manhattan Project effort, are an important part of the Hanford story.” About 40 tours will be offered from May through October. The tours will include stops at the Bruggemann Warehouse, the river-rock covered building that is the last structure from the large pre-1943 farm and orchard of the Bruggemann family; Hanford High School, which was built in 1916; and the White Bluffs Ferry Crossing at the Columbia River, which played a key role in early transportation. Plans are underway to create a new park at Hanford and related nuclear weapons sites in Los Alamos, N.M. and Oak Ridge, Tenn. The historical park would tell the story of the race to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Hanford was created to make plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. Registration for the new historic tours will open on May 12, at 8 a.m. For reservations, visit http://manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov/; or call (509) 376-1647.