[6] Pasco is one of three cities (the others being Kennewick and Richland) that make up Washington state's Tri-Cities region, a mid-sized metropolitan area of approximately 303,622 people.

On October 16, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in the Pasco area, at a site now commemorated by Sacajawea State Park.

It was named by Virgil Bogue, a construction engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway after Cerro de Pasco,[8] a city in the Peruvian Andes, where he had helped build a railroad.

In its early years Pasco was a small railroad town, but the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam in 1941 brought irrigation and agriculture to the area.

Due largely to the presence of the Hanford Site (which made the plutonium for the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb used on Nagasaki in 1945), the entire Tri-Cities area grew rapidly from the 1940s through 1950s.

After the end of World War II, the entire region went through several "boom" and "bust" periods, cycling approximately every 10 years and heavily based on available government funding for Hanford-related work.

Pasco was not a sundown town in the same way as Richland and Kennewick, however Jim Crow laws restricted African Americans to living only on the east side of the railroad tracks, which was largely underdeveloped without public water or garbage service.

In the 1940s, Edward R. Dudley visited as an investigator from the NAACP and observed widespread discrimination from businesses and law enforcement.

In a 1947 survey, black residents listed water supply and service as the most significant problem for the area, and racial discrimination as second.

In 1948, Hazel Scott was refused service at a Pasco restaurant and successfully sued the owners for discrimination, bringing national attention to racial segregation practices in the Tri-Cities.

[9] Pasco completed one of its largest annexations, comprising 7.5 square miles (19 km2) to the northwest, in August 1982 amid a legal dispute with neighboring Richland that was decided by the Washington Supreme Court.

Recently incorporated land on the West side of the city has exploded into new housing tracts, apartments, and shopping centers.

[12] As Pasco is located in Southeastern Washington, the city lies in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range.

Hot summers, warm springs, and cold winters provide a stark contrast to other areas of the state.

Pasco is home to the Tri-Cities Airport, a regional commercial and private airport served by several airlines with direct flights to 10 US cities: Burbank, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle.

Some of Pasco's largest employers include Hanford nuclear facility, BNSF Railway, Lamb Weston, Boise Cascade, Tyson Foods, Energy Northwest, Fluor Hanford Inc., Bechtel National Inc., and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory currently managed by Battelle Memorial Institute Pasco is served by the Pasco School District, Columbia Basin College, and Washington State University Tri-Cities.

The market is open from May through October each year, drawing a large regional crowd and providing an outlet for farmers selling fresh produce.

This one-day event celebrates spicy foods of all varieties and highlights the thriving Hispanic culture in the city.

Pasco is located along a major stretch of the 22-mile Sacagawea Heritage Trail, an interactive educational and recreational hiking/cycling loop that circles the Tri-Cities area.

[23] In the interim, local businesses and residents planned LGBT pride events of their own despite harassment, vandalism, threats of violence and lack of support from elected officials.