The Displaced Cemetery
When the Hanford Site construction began in 1943, several cemeteries existed in the Priest Rapids Valley. Most of these cemeteries were not in areas of construction and would be left undisturbed; however, the White Bluffs Cemetery laid in the path of development. That cemetery was forced to relocate, along with several family burial plots, for what the residents knew of at the time as the “Hanford Engineer Works Project.” The White Bluffs Cemetery Association did not oppose the moving of the cemetery, but there was much internal debate, as well as negotiations with the government, about where the bodies in the White Bluffs Cemetery would be moved to. The federal government offered to provide the mortician to move the bodies and pay for the slots for the bodies in the new cemetery they were moved to. It was decided in a meeting of the cemetery association on May 1st, 1943, that the bodies would be moved to a cemetery in Prosser.