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:
“Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“I see his monument is still there.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)