The Hanford Reach National Monument is a national monument in the U.S. State of Washington. It was created in 2000, mostly from the former security buffer surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (Hanford Site). The area has been untouched by development or agriculture since 1943.
The monument is named after the Hanford Reach, the last non-tidal, free-flowing section of the Columbia River in the United States, and is one of only two National Monuments administered by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. President Bill Clinton established the monument by presidential decree in 2000.
Ancestors of the Wanapum People, Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Colville, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and the Nez Perce used the land for hunting and resource collecting.
Geographically, the area is part of the Columbia River Plateau, formed by basalt lava flows and water erosion. The shrub-steppe landscape is harsh and dry, receiving between 5 and 10 inches (250 mm) of rain per year. The sagebrush-bitterbrush-bunchgrass lands are home to a wide variety of plants and animals, and the Hanford Reach provides one of the Northwest's best salmon spawning grounds. Forty-eight rare, threatened, or endangered animal species have found refuge on the monument, as well as several insect species found nowhere else in the world.
Read more about Hanford Reach National Monument: Fish and Wildlife, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Access
Famous quotes containing the words reach, national and/or monument:
“Under the heavens that know not what years be
The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements
Uttered even what they will in times far hence—
All of us gone out of the reach of change—
Immortal in a picture of an old grange.”
—Edward Thomas (1878–1917)
“Children’s lives are not shaped solely by their families or immediate surroundings at large. That is why we must avoid the false dichotomy that says only government or only family is responsible. . . . Personal values and national policies must both play a role.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (20th century)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)