Columbia Camp at the horn of the Yakima River was opened Feb. 1, 1944, by the Federal Bureau of Prisons Industries for "minimum-custody-type improvable male offenders," who had no more than one year to serve.

They were violators of national defense, wartime and military laws and included conscientious objectors, violators of rationing and price support laws and those convicted of espionage, sabotage and sedition by military courts-martial.

The 25-acre camp was between Horn Road and the Yakima River. A row of trees, which can be seen there today, was on the western boundary.

The camp was built by the Manhattan District Corps of Engineers, or under contract to them, using a former Civilian Conservation Corps building moved from Winifred, Mont.

These included five barracks, an office building and recreational hall.

Three buildings of the same type were moved from White Bluffs, where they had been erected for use in the Hanford construction.

In addition, the camp had five double "hutment" type barracks, 10 prefab houses and 12 single "hutments" used for housing prison executives, guards and their families.

"Hutments" was the term used for the fabricated temporary buildings that were later referred to as Quonset huts because the first of that type had been built in Quonset, R.I.

Under a wartime contract with Hanford, Federal Prison Industries operated workable orchards and vineyards.

Fruit was shipped to the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary near Tacoma, where it was processed, mostly canned, for sale to the military or other government agencies.

When the contract ended Nov. 1, 1947, a total of 5,669 tons of fruit had been processed and sold for about $500,000.

Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons show that a total of 1,300 prisoners served at Columbia Camp with 290 being the maximum at any one time.

A memo from the Bureau of Prisons archives dated March 8, 1944, noted: "Selection of inmates for Columbia Camp is of great importance because the Army Engineers have their secret military projects which they are trying to guard very zealously.

"We agreed with them to select inmates carefully and give them criminal data on every inmate selected."

A further suggestion from the memo was that criteria be set up for selection of inmates for this camp and that there be a careful review of the inmate's entire record, including interview, medical and work records.

About 40 guards and other staff lived at the camp, some with their families. Many had been transferred from within the federal prison system.

Some local people were employed as support personnel, but no one has been found who lived or worked there when Columbia Camp was operated as a prison.

Siblings Elvera Stephens, Doris Barott and John Hackney lived in the only house near the camp.

It was across the Yakima River, where their father worked for an irrigation company.

Their only contact with the camp was with school friends whose parents lived in the staff housing.

Occasionally friends would come by boat to visit.

Stephens told of the time some of the camp kids came to raid the Hackney melon patch and Mr. Hackney fired his gun in the air to frighten them.

In their haste to get away, the boys' leaky boat capsized and they had to swim home.

John Hackney recalls one winter the river froze and he walked across to visit friends at the camp.

Prisoners were transported to the orchards to prune, spray, cultivate and irrigate and then to harvest fruit. Army vehicles carrying 25 to 30 passengers were used.

Later, standard Chevrolet sedans were cut in two and made into "stretch limos" for transportation.

Monsignor William J. Sweeney of Richland recalled that he went to Columbia Camp to say Mass each Monday morning.

He would stay for breakfast and remembers that the food was very good and that everyone was especially kind to him.

Only 12 inmates escaped from the facility in the nearly four years the prison camp was in operation.

That there were not more is surprising because there was no fence along the Yakima River, and the inmates' work in the orchards was difficult to supervise.

John Hackney remembers that one fall, en route to school on the bus that carried his student friends from the camp, they saw some inmates had climbed high into the fruit trees and were temporarily missed by their guards.

Columbia Camp closed Oct. 10, 1947, when it was no longer needed.

Continued construction on the Hanford Project and in Richland had reduced the orchard lands as well as the irrigation canals serving the district.

The camp facilities were next used by Atkinson-Jones to house workers while north Richland was constructed.

From early 1948 through July 1949 Morrison-Knudsen occupied the camp while constructing the Hanford Project railroad.

Columbia Camp was taken over by the Corps of Engineers in August 1949 to house workers who were building the levees along the Columbia River in Richland and Kennewick as part of the McNary Dam project.

In February 1950 the Atomic Energy Commission announced the camp would be abandoned in the spring.

Ten prefab houses were moved to Richland, one Quonset hut went to the Richland School District, and others went out to the Hanford Reservation.

A large building, probably the recreation hall, was taken apart and reassembled in West Richland for the Community Building on Van Giesen Street. It has since been torn down.

The Benton City Methodist Church at 906 9th St. was constructed in part with materials from the large maintenance building at Columbia Camp.

In 1966, the Columbia Camp site, along with other land, was transferred to Benton County by the Bureau of Land Management and now is part of the undeveloped Horn Rapids Park.

Jean Carol Davis is a historical researcher living in Kennewick and frequently contributes to The Courier, the magazine of the East Benton County Historical Society, in which this article first appeared in February.