Washington
The Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa) opened this central Washington aluminum plant in 1952, one of several smelters the company operates in the United States. Washington produces more aluminum than any other state, a situation which started in World...
The Asarco copper smelter at Ruston, a small coastal town next to Tacoma, closed in 1985, after 80 years of operation. The closure, which included the felling of a landmark 562-foot tall smokestack, was spurred by concerns about toxic emissions of sulfur...
Bangor Sub Base manages the third largest collection of nuclear weapons in the country, with approximately 1,700 Trident missiles either stored at its hill-top depot, or onboard its fleet of eight Trident submarines which still roam the seas on secret...
The Boeing Commercial Aircraft Division complex at the north end of Paine Field in Everett includes what is called the most capacious building in the world (enclosing a volume of 600 million cubic feet on 96 acres). The 11-story high building was constructed...
Boeing's Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group is the world's largest military aircraft manufacturer. This division is based in St. Louis, but employs 3,000 people in the Seattle area, most in this complex next to Boeing Field. Work here includes...
Similar to a building construction crane, the Wind River Canopy Crane is set up in a National Forest in southern Washington for forest canopy research. A gondola platform is suspended from the crane, providing three-dimensional access to a six-acre circle of...
History is layered at the southwestern-most corner of the state, where an interpretive center sits atop an abandoned coastal battery, at the point where Lewis and Clark stood to view the Pacific at the end of their long journey. Cape Disappointment is the...
In a state dominated by some of the largest hydropower projects in the world, the big coal-fired power plant at Centralia is an anomaly. The plant was built in 1972, and is fueled by coal mined in the nearby hills. It produces 1,330 megawatts, and is blamed...
Cherry Point is the fourth largest refinery on the West Coast. 202,000 barrels of crude are processed each day at this plant to produce gasoline for northwest markets. Owned by British Petroleum (BP) the plant makes gasoline for the ARCO brand, a company that...
This mile-long federal dam on the Columbia is the second largest producer of hydropower in the nation, after the Grand Coulee. Unlike the other dams downstream, there is no fish ladder at this dam, finally stopping the most persistent salmon from migrating...
The town of Concrete in the foothills of the northern Cascades once housed the largest concrete plants in the state. Nearly half of the concrete for the Grand Coulee Dam (the largest concrete structure in the world) came from here, as well as material for...
This interpretive center is located at a point overlooking the Dry Falls site, one of the most dramatic formations of the Great Spokane Flood, a series of massive flooding events that shaped the landscape of much of eastern Washington around 15,000 years ago...
This privately owned dam supplied power primarily to the Daishowa pulp and paper mill in Port Angeles. The dam, completed in 1913, blocks passage for an estimated 390,000 salmon and steelhead, and alters the ecology of a river and delta that drains 19% of...
This reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was built in 1982 for breeder reactor research and enriched uranium production. Though it was closed in 1992, it has been placed on "Hot Standby" status, with the possibility of producing tritium and medical...
The Dawn Mining Company operated the last active uranium mill in the state, near the town of Ford, in eastern Washington, producing around 50,000 pounds per year of material that is further refined into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. The source is...
Several clusters of coastal gun batteries were built on the shores of Washington State to protect strategic areas from aggressors, starting with the Spanish-American War and continuing through World War Two. The largest group of batteries is around the...
Local resident Emil Gehrke once made numerous decorative windmills from scrap. As he is now deceased, his collection sits in a fenced enclosure in a roadside park near Grand Coulee.
