1. For the nitpickers: the term “Tri-Cities” is a little inaccurate. In addition to Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, West Richland is often included as a city in the metro area. But no one’s itching to change the name to fit.
2. During the Manhattan Project, the Hanford Site north of the Tri-Cities developed most of the weapons used in the the US World War II arsenal.
3. One of the physicists at the Hanford Site was John Archibald Wheeler, who popularized terms like “black hole” and coined the phrase “wormhole.”
4. The biggest planetarium in the state of Washington opened its doors to Pasco in 2012. The Bechtel Planetarium offers incredibly realistic movies across the entire 36 feet of domed ceiling.
5. Chuck Palahniuk, the man who brought you Tyler Durden, is originally from Pasco.
6. The confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers marks a stop on Lewis & Clark’s historic expedition. Sacagewea State Park now stands there as a reminder of her influence on the trek.
7. Side-note: when Lewis & Clark arrived at the Columbia River, they noted the large number of salmon, but couldn’t account for all of the dead salmon. If they’d known a little more about the fish’s spawning habits, they might not have been as unwilling to stock up on the tasty morsels.
8. Orson Scott Card, the creator of the “Ender’s Game” series, was born in Richland.
9. The Tri-Cities Dust Devils play in Gesa Stadium, one of the only ballparks to have south-facing stands (they are usually oriented differently to avoid the setting sun).
10. Santino Fontana, the voice of Prince Hans in “Frozen” and uber-celebrated Broadway performer, went to school in Richland.
Like Movoto on Facebook:
11. The only time key hockey rivals the Tri-City Americans and the Spokane Chiefs
didn’t play each other on New Year’s Eve was due to a player strike over one of the coaches.
12. The Americans have also made sports history a few times: their goaltender Olaf Kolzig was the first to ever register a WHL goal when he scored on the Seattle Thunderbirds in ’89.
13. Shannon Szabados became the very first female player to compete in the WHL when she played four exhibition games for the Americans. She also went on to win gold in Women’s Ice Hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
14. Nate Mendel, awesome bassist for the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, The Jealous Sound, and another little side-project called The Foo Fighters entered this world via Richland, WA.
15. You may wonder why Jump-Off-Joe Butte is named such. Well, welcome to the club. Not even the Benton County Historical Society Museum has a record of WHY it’s named thus.
16. Sixties starlet and notorious Manson Family victim Sharon Tate was nominated as “Miss Richland” in 1959.
17. The atomic marbles that were sold at the CREHST Museum were dipped into radioactive cobalt-60. The darker the brown on the marble, the longer the exposure, but don’t worry, these little guys aren’t radioactive (and now that the CREHST is closed, they're worth real money)!
18. If you’ve been to the airport and gone through the full body scanner, then you’re already aware of a Tri-Cities innovation. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is responsible for the technology that makes it possible.
19. RadCon, the biggest Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention in all the Tri-Cities, started on a leap day weekend (Feb. 28, 29 and March 1 in 1992).
20. The Water Follies is one of the only events nationwide like it—hydroplanes on the Columbia reach over 200 mph. The gigantic plume of water that follows the hydroplane, called a “rooster tail”, shoots out over a ton of water.
21. One of the most complete skeletons of a prehistoric man is the Kennewick Man, who was discovered during the Water Follies along the shores of the Columbia River in the city of Kennewick back in 1996.
22. The discovery was accidental—two hydroplane enthusiasts found the skull in the river while attending the race.
23. Before he took a really long nap on the shores of the Columbia, the Kennewick Man walked the Columbia Basin somewhere between 7300 and 7600 BCE.
24. Adventures Underground may be the dream of every geek imaginable come to life. Not only do they sell comic books, board games, trading cards and expertly-crafted figurines, but they also host local Dungeons & Dragons games.
25. Turns out not all big fish tales are fake: Pasco man John Grubenhoff caught the state’s largest walleye, which weighed in at little over a hefty 20 pounds.
26. Before it was West Richland, there was a minor squabble over the name of the city Carl Heminger outlined for the area. After popular vote opted for “Enterprise” over “Heminger City,” the rebuffed city planner struck out a little ways south to start his own city, anyway.
27. Ryan Kennelly, a Washington native, held the Bench Press World Record with a weight of 1075 pounds when the Pride Strength Wars were hosted in Kennewick in 2008.
28. Josh Spaeth, a Kennewick native, holds the world record for heaviest squat—the guy was bearing 755 lbs when he beat the record this year.
Source: Youtube user Josh Spaeth
29. Rattlesnake Mountain is often called the tallest, tree-barren mountain this side of the Grand Meridian (maybe in not so many words), but that’s actually an unsubstantiated claim.
30. Want something solid to believe in? The Rattlesnake Mountain Observatory holds the largest permanently mounted telescope in the whole Evergreen State.
31. One of the greatest cinematographers of the second generation of Hollywood, James Wong Howe, is from Taiwan by way of Pasco. He did the cinematography for “Hud,” which won him his second Academy Award.
32. Snake River was named so because of a minor gaffe by explorers, who misinterpreted the local Shoshone’s hand sign for “salmon” (a curving S) to mean “snake,” and so the river was named.
33. It’s no surprise that one of Richland’s nicknames is “City of the Bombers,” right? And while we’re dropping some nickname knowledge, Kennewick is called “The Grassy Place” and the whole shebang is called “Wine Country” or “Atomic Town”.
34. B Reactor, one of the nuclear sites constructed at Hanford, is the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor (although it has been decommissioned since the late 80s in favor of a large clean-up project).
35. In 2010, Kiplinger declared the Tri-Cities as one of the best places in the country to settle down and start a family.
What’s your favorite Tri-Cities fun fact? Tell us in the comments below!
