"Hanford is a song that hasn't been sung properly. there was a great romance about it. The way to gt the feel of that romance is to put yourself back at that meetin gin Wilmington, when we had a map of the United States spread out in fornt of us, and differnet possibilities there for where this plant might be sited. Great expanses of land, it was almost as if you were Columbus deciding where you would go exploring, or as if you were setting up a new respublic. Then, to pick that particular place, a most fantastic place. Whoever thingks of that northern state of Washington having a hot desert in its middle.That's onestory one person in a hundred knows. And that beautiful, bright blue, ice cold Columbia River coming down through it, from the ice fields of Canada. Then, the history of the place, the pioneer settlers who had desperately tried to irrigate it, and had irrigated it. Then pouring in, all this caravan, all different ways of getting there during the war. Railroad, airplanes, cars. The variety of people there, that too was romantic. Those Okies and Arkies coming in, several hundred a night, being unloaded there at Pasco. Those beer joints with windows close to ground level so that tear gas could be squirted in. The immense mess halls, accomodating those thousands of people. To see all those table, table after table of people. Gobble, gobble, gobble."
- John Wheeler, leading physicist in residence at Hanford
From Sanger Working on the Bomb, 157-158
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