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About the Research Park...

The Hanford Site was established in central Washington State in the early 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. Plutonium for nuclear weapons was created and refined on the site for 50 years. Information is available about the history of the site. For both security and public safety, access to the production facilities and a large buffer zone was strictly controlled. The result is 1482 square kilometers (570 square mile) site that is largely undisturbed by human activity. This desert site contains abundant native wildlife.

The Hanford Site is bounded on the west by Rattlesnake Mountain, a large, treeless basalt mountain. The Columbia River forms the north and east boundaries; the city of Richland is south of the site. The area is desert with a shrub-steppe landscape, and lies at an elevation that varies from 120 meters (400 feet) at the river to 1100 meters (3630 feet) at the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain.

In the 1970s, the National Environmental Research Park (NERP) program created seven NERPs to set aside land for ecosystem preservation and study. The Hanford NERP, managed by the Department of Energy, includes

• the Fitzner/Eberhardt Arid Lands Ecology Reserve, which is the only remaining sizable remnant (312 square kilometers, 120 square miles) of the Washington shrub-steppe landscape that is still in a pristine condition.
• the industrial zone of the Hanford Site, which contains nuclear production facilities in various stages of closure
• buffer zones on the opposite shore of the Columbia River: the US Department of the Interior's Saddle Mountain Wildlife Reserve and the Washington State wildlife management area.