The residents of Or
dinance, like the resi
dents of most small
towns have an appreci
ation for solitude at
twilight. In the evening,
they gather on their front
porches, listen to the
crickets, roll in the mud,
and make loud belching
noises.
Photo by Gfeg Gawtowskj
inherit town
Photo by Grog Gawtowski
When the Army moved out, the pigs just took over and the town of Ordinance has since
become the home of 27,000 wallowing, belching residents.
But when the Department of Federal
Public Housing built the self-contained
town 30 years ago, it didn’t intend the
municipality for pigs. Ordinance was
part of a scheme to put civilians to work
on the northern Oregon Umatilla Army
Depot.
In 1941, the Army had a munitions
depot site, but no nearby town to provide
By JOCK HATFIELD
Of the Emerald
workers. Rather than move the depot
site, the Army made a town from scratch.
“The Army brought in several
thousand civilians,” recalls Vi Castille,
public relations director for the depot.”
There wasn’t any nearby housing for
them, so the Army built it.”
The Army built the town in a field. By
1944 Ordinance had everything the res
idents needed for a convenient exis
tence. They had a variety store, a post
office, a school, a barber shop, and a
nursery school — all in box-like perma
nent buildings.
“It was comfortable, just like a regular
town,” recalls Juanita Bliss, whose hus
band, David, directed the housing. “We
had an honorary mayor, a city council,
and any entertainment we could think
of.”
As war became more popular, the
town’s population grew. Workers
brought their families and moved into
two and three-bedroom units.
Ordinance’s population reached a
peak during the Korean War, with
11,000 residents. After the wars ran out
the government filled the town with dam
workers. But when the dam was finished
in the late 1950s and the workers went
home, the government found itself with a
spare town. The demand for towns
wasn’t big.
Because the government wanted to
depopulate the area, authorities re
quired that Ordinance not be used to
house people. This left few alternatives.
Two bids were turned in and one of
these was for the town’s water tower.
The other was turned in by Stafford
Hansell, who had a dream.
Hansell had always had an interest in
pigs. But he had never raised them on a
large scale. “We had read an article in a
farmer's quarterly about converting
buildings to house pigs,” he says, “and
we decided to try it on the town.”
“Pigs and people required pretty
much the same facilities,” Hansell says.
“We tore out the insides of the buildings,
boarded up the windows, and put in
slanting floors.”
Hansell moved pigs into the beauty
parlor, the post office, the nursery school
and the restaurant. Pigs were soon eat
ing in the library, lounging in front yards
and having piglettes in the supermarket.
Hansell now has 27,000 pigs. Only a
few of the town’s 300 buildings are un
occupied by the pigs, and these Hansell
has saved for himself and his workers.
Hansell enjoys living in the town, and
says he doesn’t miss human company.
"A farmer likes to be near his livestock,”
he says. "I like my place here as well as
my apartment in Salem.”
After 18 years of housing pigs, Ordi
nance has changed some. The windows
on the buildings are missing. Pigs have
battered the walls and sows swim in the
front yard swamps. But this is deprecia
tion which must be expected when keep
ing boarders.
The town’s scent has changed too,
but there’s no one around to smell it
except the Army. After the government
sold the town, the Vietnam War came
along, bringing a renewed interest in
munitions depots. Just as the pigs took
over the town, the Army brought the
depot back to life. Since then the pig
farm and the Army depot, have grown
side by side — the only structures in the
midst of miles of fields and desert.
“The smell doesn’t bother us a bit,”
says a spokesman for the Army. “You’ve
got to expect it in a rural community.”
Bliss often visits her old town: the
supermarket, the barbershop, Mr. Bow
ers' grocery store, and her own home.
She thinks, if anything, the pigs are an
improvement. “The trees have grown up
where we didn't have them before, and
the ponds make it prettier," she says. "It
looks better than it did before.”