I\u2019m visiting my wife\u2019s hometown for a few days as a part of the requisite \u201cshow off the baby\u201d tour. While here, we went to Leslie Grove Park, drove past the local high school emblazoned with its mascot \u201cthe Bombers\u201d and a mushroom cloud logo, and visited the Atomic Ale brewpub, where the Atomic Ale is middling, Plutonium Porter is good, and Oppenheimer Oatmeal Stout is memorable. So what kind of town is this?<\/p>\n
This is Richland, Washington \u2013 a small town on the Columbian river whose basin would look like the desert it is if it weren\u2019t for massive irrigation. Richland would be just one of many small agricultural towns in this area but for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established during World War II, Hanford generated the plutonium used in the second and last nuclear weapon used in war and much of the plutonium found in the US nuclear arsenal today. With the likely exception of Los Alamos, there are probably more nuclear physicists per capita in this town than anywhere else in the world, though most of them are now involved in cleaning up the mess made from 50 years of cold war productivity. Suffice it to say, this is not your typical American small town.<\/p>\n
By the way, the high school got its name, the Bombers, after the entire town donated one day\u2019s pay during World War II to buy a bomber to help with the war effort. The attachment of the mushroom cloud logo occurred much later in a misguided show of pride in Hanford\u2019s cold war mission. I think the town should be more proud of how it originally earned that moniker, but what do I know? I\u2019m just a tourist on baby duty, enjoying an Oppenheimer Stout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m visiting my wife\u2019s hometown for a few days as a part of the requisite \u201cshow off the baby\u201d tour. While here, we went to Leslie Grove Park, drove past the local high school emblazoned with its mascot \u201cthe Bombers\u201d and a mushroom cloud logo, and visited the Atomic Ale brewpub, where the Atomic Ale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}