Editor's note: This story first appeared in the Dec. 22, 1992, Herald. Franklin Matthias died Dec. 3, 1993, at the age of 85.

One winter morning in 1942, Lt. Col. Franklin Matthias boarded a train at Washington's Union Station, not far from his Pentagon office.

He had no way of knowing it, but the short trip to Wilmington, Del., was the start of a journey that would alter the course of Western civilization.

Events set in motion that day would change Matthias' life and the lives of generations of Mid-Columbians.

The young Army officer's journey would help bring an end to World War II -- and in the process save millions of lives.

It would also leave a legacy that includes a landscape polluted by 678,000 curies of radioactivity, 93,000 tons of chemicals, 500,000 pounds of uranium and 400 pounds of plutonium.

In the years to follow, an industry would rise in the Mid-Columbia desert. It would put food on thousands of Tri-City tables and it would expose as many as 13,500 people in the Northwest to potentially hazardous doses of radioactive iodine.

Depending on your point of view, Matthias' step onto the train was the start of a journey that either brought the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust or preserved a precarious peace on the planet.

But on the morning of Dec. 14, 1942, the 33-year-old Matthias had no inkling of just how momentous the Wilmington meeting would prove to be for him or for Washington state.

At the time, Matthias had no official role in the race to develop the nuclear bomb, but Gen. Leslie Groves, chief of the Manhattan Engineering District, knew him well.

Groves had occasionally borrowed Matthias from the Army Corps of Engineers' construction division when he needed help on various projects.

When cost overruns for the new Pentagon building appeared likely, the general made Matthias responsible for keeping the price tag within the $35 million estimate.

Matthias ran roughshod over the architect, insisting on design criteria that wouldn't escalate the costs. In the process, he developed a reputation as an administrator who could complete a project on schedule and within budget.

Within a few months, that reputation would catapult Matthias to the top position on the war's largest construction project -- the Hanford Engineering Works.

On Dec. 2 -- just 12 days before the Wilmington meeting -- 42 scientists and workmen crowded into a squash court under the stadium at the University of Chicago for a scientific experiment.

The result was the world's first controlled nuclear chain reaction. The experimental reactor proved that it was possible to create plutonium by controlling the neutrons released by uranium.

It was a key breakthrough in efforts to develop the bomb because weapons-grade plutonium can be separated from spent nuclear fuel through a chemical process. Scientists thought this system would produce an atomic bomb quicker than any other method.

As soon as the Chicago experiment showed that the technology was feasible, plans were launched for a massive production facility.

Matthias didn't know it as he rode the train to Wilmington, but Groves already had tagged him to oversee the construction. All Matthias knew was that he had been assigned to attend.

A day earlier, Groves had summoned him. "He said, 'Go to the meeting, listen good and then call me when you get back no matter what time it is,' " Matthias recalled 50 years later from his home in Danville, Calif.

The purpose of the meeting, Matthias would learn, was to discuss the sort of site required for plutonium production.

Those attending the Wilmington meeting included members of the Chicago team and top executives from du Pont. The list included key scientists like Arthur Compton and Enrico Fermi, and top Manhattan Project officers like Col. K.D. Nichols, who headed the Oak Ridge project in Tennessee.

From earlier errands for Groves, Matthias had some understanding of the attempts at Oak Ridge to purify uranium, but the idea of a nuclear reactor was new ground.

"This was a completely new concept to change uranium to plutonium," Matthias said. Even after the Wilmington meeting, Matthias was uncertain about the purpose.

The 25 scientists, engineers and corporate leaders assembled in Wilmington laid out the requirements -- an abundance of clean water, up to 200,000 kilowatts of excess power and a lot of isolated land.

All of it had to be at least 200 miles from the coast, out of range of any Japanese aircraft carriers.

Because of the largely unknown hazards, the site couldn't be within 20 miles of a mainline railroad, 15 miles of a major highway or 30 miles of any town with a population greater than 2,000.

After the meeting, Matthias sketched out the dimensions in his diary. Plans called for six reactors, each at least three miles apart. If there was a problem at one, the distance would protect the others.

By the same token, the two plutonium separations plants had to be five miles from the reactors and six miles apart. From the rough sketch in his diary, Matthias calculated that to meet those conditions -- and others -- about 600 square miles would be required.

Matthias called Groves when he returned to Washington, D.C., about 10 p.m. The general met him at the station and the two men drove around the capital for the next hour.

"He asked me what I thought about the meeting. I said I ought to get some Buck Rogers comics so I could get comfortable with what this was all about," Matthias said.

"He thought that was cute. Then he told me what it was all about. It was the first I learned that this was for a nuclear bomb.

"Groves gave me a guess about what a tremendous explosion this would be. He also said that if we had a gallon of this in a gas form we could disable a whole city without a bomb, but that was the only time I ever heard that idea discussed."

As they drove aimlessly around Washington, D.C., Matthias would learn that Groves already had the next move arranged.

On the following day, the general told him, Matthias was scheduled to meet with two du Pont men -- Gilbert Church, a young executive at a munitions plant, and A.E.S. Hall, du Pont's chief civil engineer.

Matthias didn't know it, but Groves had an ulterior motive. Church had been tentatively tagged by du Pont to run the plutonium project and Groves had all but selected Matthias to be the top military official.

Groves threw the two together to see how they would get along, a sort of trial run before a final decision to put them in charge of one of history's most remarkable construction projects.

The day after the Wilmington meeting, Matthias, Hall and Church met with Corps of Engineers experts on electrical production. Vast amounts of electricity were needed.

The three men settled on territory near Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the Northwest, Shasta Dam in California and Boulder Dam in the Southwest.

"The next day we took off for Washington state," Matthias said. He was dazzled by the speed of events. "This was all remarkable in the way it moved along."

After a 20-hour flight on a commercial airliner, the trio arrived in Spokane.

Hall and Church posed as civilian employees of the Corps of Engineers to prevent the sort of rumors that would spring up if the name du Pont had been bandied about.

For the next week, a young captain from the Corps of Engineers' Seattle District named George Hopkins served as chauffeur and guide for the site selection team.

"Hopkins didn't know what was going on, but he knew the characteristics we were looking for. We're lucky we had George Hopkins. He knew the Northwest cold," Matthias said.

The team started poring over maps. "We thought we should lay out the plant on tracing paper that would fit the scale of the Air Force maps," Matthias said.

"We could just use the overlay to see if a site met the geographic limitations. We used that for rest of the site inspection trip to determine places worth looking at."

Potential matches appeared in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California and Arizona. Hopkins drove the team around Northeastern Washington, where they scouted locations near Grand Coulee.

At the time, they were most excited by the Horse Heaven Hills along the Oregon border. The Bonneville Power Administration's transmission line linking Grand Coulee to Bonneville Dam ran right through the remote hills.

On Dec. 22, 1942, Hopkins dropped his three charges off in Yakima. Matthias boarded a small Army Air Corps observation plane without his teammates. As civilians, Hall and Church couldn't get clearance for the military flight.

Plans were made for the two du Pont men to travel by car, checking out a small farming community called Hanford along the way. Matthias would cover Hanford, the Horse Heaven Hills and parts of Northeastern Oregon by air.

The three planned to rendezvous in Pasco that afternoon.

Various military training flights were common in the Mid-Columbia during the war years. Anyone watching from the little towns of White Bluffs or Hanford wouldn't have found much remarkable about the tiny plane buzzing along the Hanford Reach.

All the same, it was a moment sealing the destinies of the 300 residents of the two farming towns.

"The observation plane took me around the middle of Washington, over Hanford and into Oregon. When we flew over the Hanford site, I was sure that was the place," Matthias said.

A little later, Church and Hall arrived by car. In addition to the obvious factors -- like adequate power and water -- the two men took note of the desert soil.

It had the characteristics necessary to support the massive structures they had in mind.

Local gravel also was suitable to use in the tons of concrete that would house the plutonium plants' reactors and separation plants.

By early afternoon, Matthias, Church and Hall met in Pasco.

"They were just as excited as I was. They could see everything we were looking for," Matthias said.

"All three of us were very, very firm in our opinion that the site was so good that there couldn't be a better one in the country," he added.

"It looked perfect in almost every respect."

The team continued its tour of the West, checking sites in California and Arizona, but the exercise only confirmed Matthias' earlier decision.

He left Los Angeles for the Pentagon on New Year's Eve 1942, writing his report during the long flight across the country. On the first day of the new year, Matthias presented his findings to Groves.

Although the general visited Hanford personally before officially signing off on the team's recommendation, the die was already cast for Hanford's future.