Native peoples 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.
Settlement and early 20th century visiting Kennewick in 1908. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. An effort to build a new bridge began in 1949 and was funded in 1951 because of increasing 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 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.
20th century racial discrimination Racial discrimination against African Americans was common in Kennewick before the
civil rights movement. The city was a
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.
1980 to present The
1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens caused
volcanic ash to fall on Kennewick. Higher accumulations were recorded in surrounding communities, such as
Ritzville, and 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. 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 (I-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. 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. ==Geography==