LOCAL 

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Sunday, July 25, 2004

Depot brings growth to Hermiston

By CHUCK SLOTHOWER of the East Oregonian


HERMISTON — The Umatilla Army Depot sparked massive growth upon its inception and continues to provide steady employment for the Hermiston area.

Before the depot — now called the Umatilla Chemical Depot — opened in 1941, Hermiston had a population of 803 supported by small-scale agriculture such as turkey-picking and canning. By 1950, it had a population of 3,804 and was well on its way to becoming a regional economic power.

“The Umatilla Army Depot, without a doubt, put Hermiston on the map,” former Mayor Frank Harkenrider said. “It’s had a tremendous impact on this community.”

The Umatilla Chemical Depot employs 1,200-1,300 government contractors and soldiers. Roughly half of them live in Oregon and half in Washington, depot spokeswoman Mary Binder said. While the depot no longer dominates the local economy as it once did, it helps provide economic stability.

“It helps us maintain a diversity of employment, and that type of diversity of basic jobs within a community is the single most important factor to long-term economic growth,” City Manager Ed Brookshier said.

The two Army officers who picked the site in 1940 started an influx of 10,000 workers for the depot’s construction that the city was totally unprepared to handle. The workers slept in tents, shacks, barns, cars and even chicken coops, according to a 1991 East Oregonian article. The city ran sewer lines across residents’ front lawns. Schools overflowed and it took 10 years for the city to build a new high school.

“It hit us like a tornado,” Harkenrider said. “It just overwhelmed us for a while.”

The depot replaced small-scale agriculture as the major employer in Hermiston, providing jobs for Harkenrider, his father and many others. The jobs fueled business growth in the area. The Union Pacific railroad built a large rail yard in Hinkle in the early 1950s. A group of 10 Hermiston leaders founded the nonprofit Hermiston Development Corporation in the early 1960s to attract more business.

Construction of the McNary Dam, completed in 1951, provided another key to the Hermiston area’s development. Better irrigation because of the dam allowed large-scale farming for the first time.

“They started sprinkling here and agriculture took off like gangbusters,” former City Manager Tom Harper said.

To cope with this growth the city hired Harper, its first manager, in 1961.

“When I first came here there weren’t hardly any paved streets in town,” Harper said. “So a lot of improvement needed to be done, but the people wanted it done.”

The city issued 10-year improvement bonds to allow Hermiston residents to pave their streets and install water or sewer lines and pay it off over a 10-year period. The 1954 completion of Good Shepherd Community Hospital, a new regional water center and road construction helped provide further infrastructure to handle the growth. Hermiston paved its alleys in 1964-1965.

Even with all this playing catch-up, Hermiston found time to plan its growth. The city designed its Urban Growth Boundary and comprehensive plan in 1965, seven years before a state requirement kicked in.

“It was a lot of fun,” Harper said. “Boy, we were busy people.”

The depot continued to provide substantial employment but it dwindled in the 1960s, Harkenrider said. The city’s continued efforts to diversify its economy blunted the impact of the job losses.

The employment continued to fluctuate depending on the Army’s needs. The number of jobs dropped dramatically to about 170 after the depot destroyed the last of its conventional weapons in 1994, but recovered in 1997 when groundbreaking began on structures for storing chemical munitions.

The depot plans to finish disposing of its chemical weapons around 2009-2010. Under that timeline, the Army would dismantle the depot and clean the property around 2012-2015.

Brookshier spoke optimistically about life after the depot.

“When the time arrives that the process is over out there, I’m very confident that we’ll have a strong enough economy that it won’t have any effect,” Brookshier said. He noted that the depot property could see redevelopment into industrial or other uses.

Hermiston’s growth has been helped by its location as a transportation hub with a freeway, rail lines and shipping on the Columbia River nearby. The city continues to grow today. Construction of a Wal-Mart on the north end of Highway 395 brought in a slew of new chain businesses. Residential growth is accelerating all over town.

“Actually, we’re seeing residential growth in all four quadrants,” Brookshier said. “I don’t expect that that pattern is going to change. I think we’re going to see continued growth in all parts of the city.”

He added, “We’re going to be pushing our Urban Growth Boundary as far as our available land, in my opinion, in the next seven years.”

Harper and Harkenrider said the special mix of the depot, stable businesses, transportation and smart leadership has guided the town’s growth through the last 60 years. They said that shouldn’t change anytime soon.

“Hermiston’s always been a can-do city,” Harkenrider said.