When Margaret Hartman Wellman arrived at Hanford in November 1943, children were literally hanging out of the windows of the schoolhouse.

They were the "trailer rats" - primarily the children of the construction hands who lived in 4,300 temporary trailers.

Hanford managers were desperate for teachers - all women - to supervise the students while their parents toiled at building and operating the world's first plutonium production facility.

Wellman, a Benton City native, came to work with women ages 25 to 40 who were recruited from the South, East and Midwest.

"We had some priority because they needed to keep those parents there and to keep them happy," said Wellman, a teacher and later an administrator for nearly 30 years, mostly in Richland. "We kept a lot of them here. We kept them on the job."

And that meant, "We were the darling of the book salesmen," she recalled. "You really weren't questioned about what you bought. You just had whatever you could think of."

The school had 560 students and 18 teachers in the fall of 1943.

By the end of the school year, those numbers had grown to 1,891 students and 38 teachers, reported the Columbia Basin News.

Grade-school classes were first held in the gymnasium of the school at the former Hanford town site. High school students were taken to Columbia High School in Richland.

"Kids were glad to come to school. It gave them something to do," Wellman said.

Before long, barracks were used as schools, then new school buildings had to be built in Richland for the exploding student population.

By 1944, Richland had one of the nation's highest birth rates: 27 per 1,000, compared with 20.2 births per 1,000 in the rest of the United States.

By 1946, one-sixth of Richland's population was under 6 years old.

Hanford historian Michele Gerber said rumor had it the high number of pregnancies were linked to an early morning coal train that regularly awakened Richland residents.

While married couples and children stayed in the trailer camp, most of the single women lived in one of 64 women's barracks.

The barracks were surrounded by a 10-foot fence topped with barbed wire and monitored by armed guards.

Each room contained two twin beds, two desks and two closets. There were few radios, but the women read or played cards.

Many of them were so tired after their long, six-day weeks, they often just went to sleep after dinner.

They readied for work in a communal bathroom in front of a line of sinks and mirrors.

They did their own laundry by hand with a washboard in a porcelain tub in community laundry rooms. Wet clothes were hung out to dry on poles.

Eventually, a post office, bank, grocery and women's clothing shop were built at Hanford.

Some women, like Mitzi Butcher, gave up trying to get into Pasco to shop and instead ordered dresses and other clothes from mail-order magazines.

When a parcel arrived, other women bustled around because if something didn't fit, Butcher might sell it to them, she recalled.

At that time, shoes were rationed and when the soles wore thin, cardboard was used as a cushion. "You could feel every rock," Butcher remembered.

Marjorie Peterson, then the 19-year-old daughter of Hanford's supervisor of women's activities, recalled Hanford this way: "It was a hell hole. The dust blew. It was hot. There was no air conditioning. It was dirty.

"There was one little store and you lined up to buy toothpaste. You stood in line to get your mail. You stood in line to get your check and you lined up to cash your check."

But in spite of the trying conditions, the turnover rate for Hanford women was much lower than it was for the men, though exact numbers are not known, Gerber said.

Overall, turnover ranged from 8 to 20 percent and was blamed on loneliness, isolation, the dust storms and the secrecy surrounding Hanford's mission, she said.

But Gerber noted that the women were motivated by what they could do and learn, rather than by their paychecks.

To keep up morale, many activities were organized, including orchestras, stage shows, band concerts, war movies and ping pong.

Women also could bowl or play baseball, basketball, softball and volleyball.

The auditorium was built in July 1944 and became the center of life at Hanford, with frequent dances, visiting circuses and acrobats.

A women's refreshment center seated 576 people and offered a tavern, canteen, soda fountain and snack bar.

Beauty contests and a "Girl of the Week" contest also were created to boost morale and honor women, Gerber said. "Girl of the Week" winners were driven to work in a staff car.

In Richland, sororities, including Beta Sigma Phi, also were popular and served as cultural clubs for women who wanted to learn about the finer things in life, such as tea parties and banquets.

For the married women with children, Girl Scout troops were formed and high schoolers created baby-sitting unions.

While men overwhelmingly outnumbered women at Hanford, little dating occurred in the early 1940s.

Many of the construction workers were married and many single men were at war. But because of the shroud of secrecy, little is known about violence against women or men on the site.

Even rarer than an available man was an available car.

Those lucky enough to have one would load up friends and take a rickety ferry boat across to Franklin County for a country drive or picnic.

Others took road trips to Seattle; Portland; Yakima; or Vancouver, British Columbia. They visited Mount Rainier or skied at Tollgate, Ore.

More often their fun included getting together with several friends for a party in a room or house.

Wellman, who still lives in Richland, said Hanford was not only important for the federal government, but it brought together many people from all over the country.

"It brought so many people to this part of the state. ... I had a good time and I made friends - though many were not lasting friends," she said. "I never have regretted it."