Where the Yakima River makes a loop north nearly reaching the Hanford Reservation before returning south to join the Columbia River, Horace Sykes took this soft focus look west to Rattlesnake Mountain. The ridge runs between 3400 and 3550 feet, or about 3000 feet above the Yakima River here on the outskirts of Richland. The coloring of all this reminds me of the table mats that Standard Oil, I think it was, gave away to "fill it up" customers in the late 40s and 50s. They were all picturesque scenes of Western America - as I remember them. My dad collected them, and so I always thought they were valuable. When I found a fist full of these in a Wallingford garage sale a few years back I felt i had found something precious although I knew that I had not. If Horace visit this place in the early 1940s he would not have known what was going on only a few miles to the north - the development of the first Atomic Bomb.
