Hanford national park visitor center dedicated

The stars and stripes were raised over the Richland visitor center for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park in Richland at a dedication ceremony Tuesday.

The center that has served as a gateway for tours of Hanford’s historic B Reactor since 2009 has had $127,000 of improvements made by the Port of Benton.

It stepped up and took a chance on a young national park, said Colleen French, DOE’s national park program manager at Hanford.

It may not be the visitor center long term. The National Park Service is required to conduct a study and prepare a Visitor Access and Use Plan that will pick a permanent location.

In the meantime, visitors and employees will have a better experience at the interim visitor center at 2000 Logston Blvd., off Highway 240.

“This is probably the most developed tour operation of the three parks,” Kris Kirby, superintendent of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, said at the dedication.

The park tells the story of the race against the Nazis to develop the world’s first atomic weapons at three sites — Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford. At Hanford workers built the world’s first production scale reactor to produce plutonium.

The park only dates to 2015, but public tours of historic B Reactor have brought 70,000 people to the reactor since 2009. They have come from all 50 states and more than 80 countries.

“The Manhattan Project is controversial and complex, but it is also incredibly compelling,” Kirby said.

It was a time in history when ordinary people came together, no questions asked, “as Americans to preserve our way of life and move forward,” she said.

Now bus tours leave from the visitors center, heading out to both B Reactor and to four turn-of-the-last-century buildings that tell the story of the pre-war communities of Hanford and White Bluffs. Their residents were ordered off their land to make way for the secret wartime project.

The Port of Benton, which owns the visitor center building, remodeled the building to make space for offices for both Department of Energy and park service staff to work together on the park.

It also created space for souvenirs to be sold, likely starting with the next tour season.

“Where’s my magnet?” is the most frequent question staff hear, French said.

Now they direct visitors to around the corner to Whimzeez, which sells T-shirts, caps and travel mugs featuring B Reactor, plus some more unusual souvenirs, like powdered surplus graphite from the reactor.

The visitor’s center will be able to sell park service merchandise to complement local merchant offerings.

The center now is open to walk-in visitors who want to sign up for a tour or take a look at displays that line the walls of one room.

They tell the story of those who were required to leave behind their homes, farms and businesses, and what life was like for the 50,000 people who arrived to build the industrial complex that would make plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end WWII.

A docent may be available to play a video or answer questions.

The center is open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday during the tour season.

To register for a tour or arrange a tour, call the center at 509-376-1647 or register online at bit.ly/NationalParkTours.

This story was originally published July 25, 2017 at 7:14 PM with the headline "Hanford national park visitor center dedicated."