Each week Oregon Experience shares a photo highlighting the region's diverse, exciting history.
Hanford was picked as an ideal site to produce plutonium which could be used as fuel for an atomic bomb. People from all over the country came to the site to work on the project not knowing what the project actually was. They only knew they were aiding the war effort. Many women were employed as clerks, stenographers, laboratory technicians, food service workers and for a variety of other jobs. The women's barracks were surrounded by a barbed wire fence and patrolled by guards.
Watch the Oregon Experience documentary “Hanford” to learn more about the lives of the men and women who helped to build the first atomic bomb.
This series is in partnership with The Oregon Historical Society