Richland, city, Benton County, southern Washington, at the junction of the Columbia and Yakima rivers; settled 1863, incorporated as a city 1958. It is the headquarters of the United States Department of Energy Hanford Site, a nuclear energy research and nuclear waste management complex. The city is named for Nelson Rich, a landowner who brought irrigation to the area in the 1890s. The population of Richland grew from 240 to about 11,000 when it was taken over by the U.S. government in 1942-1943 to house employees of the Hanford Atomic Works, then a center for developing the atomic bomb. Federal control of the community was gradually relinquished after World War II. Population 33,578 (1980); 32,315 (1990); 38,708 (2000).
