Native Americans populated the area around modern-day Kennewick for millennia before being discovered and settled by European descendants. These inhabitants consisted of people from the Umatilla, Wanapum, Nez Perce, and Yakama tribes. Kennewick’s low elevation helped to moderate winter temperatures. On top of this, the riverside location made salmon and other river fish easily accessible. By the 19th century, people lived in and between two major camps in the area. These were located near present-day Sacajawea State Park in Pasco and Columbia Point in Richland. Lewis and Clark noted that there were many people living in the area when they passed through in 1805 and 1806. The map produced following their journey marks two significant villages in the area – Wollawollah and Selloatpallah. These had approximate populations of 2,600 and 3,000 respectively.
There are conflicting stories on how Kennewick gained its name, but these narratives attribute it to the Native Americans living in the area. Some reports claim that the name comes from a native word meaning “grassy place”. It has also been called “winter paradise,” mostly because of the mild winters in the area. In the past, Kennewick has also been known by other names. The area was known as Tehe from 1886 to 1891, and this name appears on early letters sent to the area with the city listed as Tehe, Washington. Other reports claim that the city’s name is derived from how locals pronounced the name Chenoythe, who was a member of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The Umatilla and Yakama tribes ceded the land Kennewick sits on at the Walla Walla Council in 1855. Ranchers began working with cattle and horses in the area as early as the 1860s, but in general settlement was slow due to the arid climate. Ainsworth became the first non-Native settlement in the area—where U.S. Route 12 now crosses the Snake River between Pasco and Burbank. Some Ainsworth residents would commute to what is now Kennewick via small boats for work. All that remains of Ainsworth is a marker placed by the Washington State Department of Transportation near the site.
During the 1880s, steamboats and railroads connected what would become known as Kennewick to the other settlements along the Columbia River. Until the construction of a railroad bridge, rail freight from Minneapolis to Tacoma had to cross the Columbia River via ferry. In 1887, a temporary railroad bridge was constructed by the Northern Pacific Railroad connecting Kennewick and Pasco. That bridge could not endure the winter ice on the Columbia and was partially swept away in the first winter. A new, more permanent bridge was built in its place in 1888. It was around this time that a town plan was first laid out, centered around the needs of the railroad. A school was constructed using donated funds, but this burned soon after it was finished. This initial boom only lasted briefly, as most of the people who came to Kennewick left after the bridge was finished.
In the 1890s, the Northern Pacific Irrigation Company installed pumps and ditches to bring water for agriculture into the Kennewick Highlands. Once there was a reliable water source, orchards and vineyards were planted all over the Kennewick area. Strawberries were another successful crop. The turn of the century saw the creation of the city’s first newspaper, the Columbia Courier. Kennewick was officially incorporated on February 5, 1904. and the name of the newspaper changed to the Kennewick Courier in 1905 to reflect this change. In the following decade, an unsuccessful bid attempted to move the seat of Benton County from Prosser to Kennewick. There have been other unsuccessful attempts to make this move throughout the city’s history, most recently in 2010.
In 1915, the opening of the Celilo Canal connected Kennewick to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River. City residents hoped to capitalize on this new infrastructure by forming the Port of Kennewick, making the city an inland seaport. Freight and passenger ship traffic began that same year. The port also developed rail facilities in the area. Transportation in the region further improved with the construction of the Pasco-Kennewick Bridge in 1922, which is locally known as the Green Bridge. This bridge connected the two cities by vehicle traffic for the first time. Kennewick and Pasco both experienced decent growth and became informally known as the Twin Cities throughout the Columbia Basin because of their juxtaposition across the river from each other.
Like many other agricultural communities, the Great Depression had an impact in Kennewick. Despite lowered prices for crops grown in the region, the city continued to experience growth, gaining another 400 people during the 1930s. Growth was aided by federal projects that improved the Columbia River. Downstream, Bonneville Dam at Cascade Locks, Oregon allowed larger barges to reach Kennewick. Grand Coulee Dam, located upstream of Kennewick, fostered irrigation across the Columbia Basin north of Pasco, sending more raw material through Kennewick.
Kennewick and the greater Tri-Cities area experienced significant changes during World War II. In 1943, the United States opened the Hanford nuclear site in and north of Richland. Its purpose originally was to help produce nuclear weaponry, which the US was trying to develop. People came from across the United States to work at Hanford, who were unaware of what they were actually producing. They were only told that their work would help the war effort. The federal government constructed housing in Richland, but many employees of that site then commuted from Kennewick. The plutonium refined at the Hanford Site was used in the Fat Man bomb, which was dropped in Nagasaki in 1945 in the decisive final blow of the war. As the Hanford Site’s purpose has evolved, there has continually been a tremendous influence from the site on the workforce and economy of Kennewick. Due to activity at the Hanford Site, the 1950 census recorded major population growth in the Tri-Cities, with Richland overtaking to become the largest city in the region. From 1940 to 1950, the population of Richland grew from 247 residents to 21,793 residents, while Pasco gained from 3,913 to 10,114, and Kennewick increased from 1,918 to 10,085.
An effort to build a new bridge began in 1949 and was funded in 1951. Traffic between Kennewick and Pasco, largely due to commuters heading to and from the Hanford Site in Richland and McNary Dam, which was under construction near Umatilla, Oregon. The two-lane Green Bridge was the only one for automobiles across the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities at the time, and the 10,000 cars crossing it daily had created traffic problems. A new four-lane divided highway bridge, dubbed the Blue Bridge, opened in 1954 less than 2 miles (3.2 km) upstream from the Green Bridge. The Cable Bridge opened between Kennewick and Pasco in 1978 and was built to replace the Green Bridge. However, demolishing the Green Bridge proved to be controversial. Those seeking to preserve the bridge for historical reasons were able to stall the demolition, but it was eventually torn down in 1990.
Racial discrimination against African Americans was common in Kennewick before the civil rights movement. The city had been an informal sundown town, requiring African Americans to be out of the city after nightfall. The only place they could live in the Tri-Cities at one time was east Pasco. Even during the day, African Americans would experience harassment by the general public and police, with some police officers stopping every person of color they found in the city after dark. In the 1940s, covenants restricted African Americans from owning property in the city. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that racially restrictive covenants could not be enforced in state courts, these were replaced by informal agreements between homeowners and realtors to refuse to sell to African Americans.
Kennewick’s racial discrimination problems became a contributing factor behind a community college not being built there in the 1950s. In 1963, regional NAACP leaders started pressuring the state government to investigate exclusionary practices and staged demonstrations in front of city hall. Initial meetings led the state to determine that while no official policy banning African Americans from the city existed, racial discrimination was a significant barrier to that community living and feeling safe. Despite this, the Washington State Board Against Discrimination indicted Kennewick for its sundown town status.
The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens caused several inches of volcanic ash to fall on Kennewick. Higher accumulations were recorded in Yakima and Ritzville, but the ash plume was thick enough to trigger street lamps to turn on at noon. Cars that didn’t have external filters stopped functioning during the eruption, and it took several months to completely clean all the ash. Kennewick and surrounding areas have been dusted by smaller eruptions of Mount St. Helens since.
The area was connected to the Interstate Highway System in 1986 when construction on Interstate 82 between Benton City and the south end of Kennewick was completed. This came after over a decade of fighting between Washington and Oregon regarding the planned route of the freeway. With backing from Tri-Cities and Walla Walla area businesses, Washington had pushed for a route that connected those cities. With Oregon eventually opposing proposed routes that didn’t cross the Umatilla Bridge, a compromise was reached placing I-82 on its current alignment to the south and southwest of Kennewick while authorizing the construction of Interstate 182 as a spur heading directly into Richland and Pasco.
The 1980s also brought the two most serious attempts to merge Kennewick with the other cities in the Tri-Cities, both of which failed. This resulted from an economic down turn in the area caused by the cancellation of two proposed nuclear power plants on the Hanford Site. The first proposal was to consolidate all three cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) into one, while the second only included Kennewick and Richland. Support for both of these attempts was strong in Richland, but voters in Kennewick and Pasco were not on board.
The Toyota Center was used as a venue for ice hockey and figure skating during the 1990 Goodwill Games. This international sporting competition was similar to the Olympic Games, but significantly smaller in scale. Most of the events were held in the host city, Seattle, but were also staged in other areas of the state, including Tacoma and Spokane.
In 1996, an ancient human skeleton was found on a bank of the Columbia River. Known as Kennewick Man, the remains are notable for their age (some 9,300 years). Ownership of the bones has been a matter of controversy with Native American tribes in the Inland Northwest claiming the bones to be from an ancestor of theirs and wanting them to be reburied. After a court litigation, a group of researchers were allowed to study the remains and perform various tests and analyses. They published their results in a book in 2014. A 2015 genetic analysis confirmed the ancient skeleton’s ancestry to the Native Americans of the area (some observers contended that the remains were of European origin). The genetic analysis has notably contributed to knowledge about the peopling of the Americas.
Kennewick fared better than most of the state during the Great Recession, primarily due to consistent job growth in the metro area during that time. This was largely driven by the Hanford Site, which only had one significant period of layoffs which briefly caused economic uncertainty. Home sales experienced a small decline from 2007 to 2009, but rebounded in 2010. Since the recession, Kennewick has expanded greatly. While growth has been experienced throughout the city, new development has been strongest in the Southridge area along U.S. Route 395 (US 395) and in the west part of the city thanks to their access to major roads and the ample land available in those areas when development started.
