W.E. Johnson would love his park. The 52 in ‘25 Richland park walks continue along with the speculation on how Claybell Park was named.

The 52 in ‘25 park walk series continued on June 23 in W.E. Johnson Park. About a dozen people met Richland Parks and Public Facilities Director Chris Waite near the archery range at 1351 Hall Rd. to check out the 236-acre park.

The history of W.E. Johnson Park

Unlike Claybell Park, the naming of W.E. Johnson Park is well documented.

Two Richland students picked names for the three parks as part of a Richland Parks Department competition. The Richland City Council honored the three men the students chose at their October 2, 1977, meeting, according to an article in the Tri-City Herald archives. Johnson was the only one of the three honored who was alive at the time. At the same meeting Lawless Park was named for Judge James Lawless and Paul Lindell Park was named for the former parks department superintendent.

The students may have known when they proposed naming the area for W.E. Johnson, that he loved horses and likely rode his own horse from nearby stables to the property that borders the Yakima River and once included a landfill. Today, the park has equestrian trails throughout, and riders were enjoying those during the park walk.

“Wilfrid had a lifelong love affair with horses.” according to Johnson’s obituary written by Roy H. Beaton in 1985 when John died at age 79. 

Beaton wrote that Johnson “did not get his own horse until he had been married for ten years, but was rarely without horses from that time on.”

Johnson was born in Whitley Bay, England in 1905, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1926. He received a bachelor’s degree and a masters degree in mechanical engineering from Oregon State University.

From 1952 to 1966, while General Electric (GE) had the contract to run Hanford Atomic Works, Johnson was general manager.

On May 1, 1966, according to Beaton, Johnson took an early retirement from GE. Richland city records obtained by the Observer show that in July, the Richland City Council appointed Johnson to replace a councilmember who had resigned. After President Lyndon Johnson appointed Johnson to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission, he resigned from city council in November 1967.

Some participants had concerns about a park project.

Some of the participants in the park walk had an issue with the parks department last year. Before Waits joined the city staff, a 10-acre section of shrub-steppe habitat had been cleared without consulting interested parties like the Tapteal Greenway group, the Native Plant Society and the Audubon Society. The mitigation project was planned to compensate for five acres of natural area losses near Columbian Center Blvd. by eliminating foreign invasive species that had grown around the sagebrush in that area of W.E. Johnson Park.

The conservation groups felt that the project had done more harm than good to the park area. A May 31, 2024, Tri-City Herald article quoted Debbie Berkowitz, an Audubon Society member, “They went in and dozed everything.”

Since then, mitigation oversight has been transferred to the Benton County Conservation District.

The walkers stopped by the site to see how the weed removal in that area was going. The Observer talked to Berkowitz, who was on the walk, to ask what she thought of it now. “Until they plant, I don’t know,” she said.

A theory for the origin of the name Claybell Park

Waite told the Observer that he had contacted Mark Bauder, the son of the developer of Meadow Springs, the late Milo Bauder, to ask how Claybell Park was named. Mark Bauder, like every long-time resident of Richland who has been asked, did not know.

One reader suggested that the name came via Richland’s relationship with their sister city, Hsinchu,Taiwan.  Another reader, who lives near Hsinchu, pointed out that although visitors may have taken clay bells to Richland from Hsinchu, clay bells were originally a Japanese art form .

So Japanese clay bells introduced to Richland through their sister city HsinChu, Taiwan, seems like the best theory so far for the park’s name.

Park tours continue.

Park tours will continue, often combined with “Pop-up Play.” The next tour is Tuesday, July 8 at the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate. The parks department has a calendar.