“When President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the go-ahead for the Manhattan Project, he set in motion an extraordinary collaboration amongst scientists and the military to develop an atomic bomb, driven by fears of Hitler’s creating one first. Whether or not the eventual dropping of the bombs on Japan was necessary to end the war in the Pacific will probably never be resolved. But the bomb undoubtedly changed the world, as well as the cultural, historical, and physical landscape of southeastern Washington.”
—From “The Atomic Landscape,” by Tim Steury
Take a photographic journey through the history of Hanford below. Images and much of the text courtesy the Department of Energy and the Library of Congress. Visit the Hanford website to learn more.