"We're free, we're incorporated, and we're the eleventh largest city in the state of Washington," shouted the master of ceremonies one evening last week, as 2,000 residents of Richland (pop. 23,000) gathered to watch a simulated atomic explosion and a bonfire lit by an atomic fuse. Cause for celebration: after 15 years as a company town servicing the big-secret plutonium works known as the Hanford Atomic Project, Richland had voted itself out from under the paternalistic wings of the Atomic Energy Commission and General Electric, prime AEC contractor. And the vote had...
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