CQ Politics

Lying just east of the Cascade Mountains, the 4th includes some of the state’s most fertile land as well as large stretches of the Columbia River (shared with the 3rd and 5th), which works its way down the middle of the district before turning west to form the state’s border with Oregon.

Yakima County is the 4th’s largest, both in land area and population, and is home to the Yakima Valley, known as the fruit bowl of the Northwest. It includes Yakama Indian Reservation and part of the U.S. Army’s Yakima Training Center, which spreads into Kittitas County. Heavily irrigated agriculture drives the valley, which is full of apple orchards and fields of hops. In fact, the valley produces more than 75 percent of the total U.S. hops crop and hosts the Hop Growers of America.

Benton County to the east takes in the 4th’s other population center. The Tri-Cities of Kennewick, Richland and Pasco on the Columbia River are a hotbed for scientific research. This area also is home to the Energy Department’s Hanford nuclear site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is the district’s primary employer and takes up nearly 600 square miles on the Columbia. Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation, and negotiations are ongoing to build — and transport Hanford waste to — a national waste repository in Nevada.

The Wenatchee National Forest sustains some timber jobs despite recent cutbacks. The Columbia Basin project delivers water to the area’s wineries and potato, corn and fruit farms. Many of these agrarian areas have attracted populations that are more than 75 percent Hispanic.

The 4th is the state’s most conservative district. George W. Bush won every county in the district in the 2004 presidential election and took the district with 63 percent of the vote.

Major Industry

Scientific research, fruit orchards and other agriculture, timber

Cities

Yakima, 71,845; Kennewick, 54,693; Richland, 38,708; Pasco, 32,066

Notable

The oldest skeleton ever found in North America was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River in Richland in 1996; Maryhill’s Stonehenge Memorial, a full-scale replica of England’s famous neolithic henge, was the first monument in the United States dedicated to the dead of WWI.