A10
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Decade: Marijuana sales, wolves return and Hermiston population takes the lead
Continued from Page A1
After more than 70 years
of operation, the Army deac-
tivated the Hermiston-area
depot and transferred control
to the Oregon Army National
Guard.
Originally opened in 1941,
the facility supported the
Army during World War II
before transitioning to chem-
ical weapon disposal. At its
height, the depot destroyed
12% of the country’s chemi-
cal weapons, reaching a mile-
stone in 2011 when it inciner-
ated the last 2,000 pounds of
mustard gas.
In 2014, a group looking
to redevelop parts of the mas-
sive property into an indus-
trial area rebranded itself
the Columbia Development
Authority.
Now led by Executive
Director Greg Smith, who
also represents the land in the
Oregon House of Representa-
tives, the CDA has been wait-
ing for the Army to transfer
ownership to the group for
years.
The latest word is that the
federal government intends
to offl oad the land in the fi rst
half of 2020.
3 (tie). Union Pacific lays
off more than 200 people in
Hermiston, closes most of
Hinkle Rail Yard
The era of Umatilla County
as a rail hub instead of a pass
through for trains is over.
The beginning of the end
started in March when work-
ers told the East Oregonian
that Union Pacifi c Railroad
laid off 80 workers at Hinkle
Rail Yard over the past few
months and closed the yard’s
hump. By May, Union Pacifi c
announced it was laying off
another 195 workers and clos-
ing its supply warehouse and
mechanical shop, leaving only
a skeleton crew in its wake.
Although the freight rail
industry all but disappeared in
2019, rail in Umatilla County
has been declining for years.
The Amtrak Pioneer line,
a route that once ran from
Seattle to Salt Lake City that
included a stop in Pendleton,
held its last trip in 1997 due to
budget cuts.
Although the service is
gone, the rail remains, and a
group of local train support-
ers has formed with the idea
of getting the Pioneer line, or
some version of it, back on
track.
3 (tie). Marijuana goes on
sale in Pendleton
On a night where most
Americans were tracking who
would take the White House,
Pendleton voters delivered a
surprise of their own.
In November 2016, Pend-
leton voters approved three
ballot measures that legalized
medical and recreational mar-
ijuana sales, in addition to a
local marijuana sales tax.
Within a few months,
Pendleton became the only
city in Umatilla County with
a legal pot market.
The city had to quickly
turn around and create reg-
ulations for the burgeoning
industry. Within a year of the
vote, Pendleton attracted three
marijuana dispensaries and a
professional cannabis grow.
Even as the industry has
dealt with a glut of marijuana
production, all the original
cannabis businesses remain
operational and a fourth
retailer opened in 2019.
Although there remains
a funding shortfall in Pend-
leton’s street system, the city
council directed some of the
revenue from the local tax to
road maintenance.
5. Pendleton UAS Range takes off
The Pendleton Unmanned
Aerial Systems eventually
started attracting business,
but it needed a long runway to
get off the ground.
The Federal Aviation
Administration designated
Pendleton an offi cial drone
test site at the tail end of 2013,
but there wasn’t much activity
in its fi rst few years.
But by 2018, several cus-
tomers, including an affi liate
of French aviation giant Air-
bus and defense contractor
PAE, had set up shop at the
Pendleton airport, and local
businesses were reporting
new sources of revenue from
employees staying or living in
town.
The city is now in the
midst of building a multimil-
lion-dollar UAS industrial
park at the airport to create
more hangar and testing space
for customers.
Despite creating several
permanent jobs and bringing
in dozens of workers on tem-
porary stays, the Pendleton
UAS Range is still waiting to
land its fi rst production facil-
ity, a development local offi -
cials believe would be a sig-
nifi cant job creator.
6. Round-Up rides to 100
The Pendleton Round-
Up’s centennial brought a new
level of success for the vener-
able rodeo in 2010, a high the
Round-Up hasn’t come down
from.
The Round-Up’s 100th
anniversary brought its fair
share of pomp and circum-
stance: the revival of the
grand serpentine entrance
and long-gone rodeo favorites
from yesteryear.
But the Round-Up also did
big business that year, setting
records for attendance and
total earnings.
Despite putting the centen-
nial in the rearview mirror,
the Round-Up has continued
to post strong ticket and mer-
chandise sales.
Another
moneymaker
for the Round-Up, its roy-
alty agreement with Pendle-
ton Whisky, took on a bigger
spotlight when the brand was
bought by liquor giant Prox-
imo Spirits in 2017.
The Round-Up’s success
allowed the association to
buy the neighboring Albert-
sons property in early 2018,
demolish the vacant super-
market, and start building a
new retail and administra-
tive facility. The association
also acquired property west of
the rodeo grounds to accom-
modate a new indoor rodeo
arena and classroom space for
Blue Mountain Community
College.
It wasn’t strictly a glide path
to success for the Round-Up:
in 2017, stockholders nearly
rejected the board of director’s
pick for president while com-
plaining about a lack of adher-
ence to association bylaws
and late fi nancial statements.
7. Hermiston takes
population lead
In 2011, Hermiston reached
a feat decades in the making.
The U.S. Census revealed
that Hermiston had surpassed
Pendleton, the Umatilla
County seat, as the largest city
in Eastern Oregon.
The gap was only 133 peo-
ple that year, but it’s only con-
tinued to widen as the decade
has progressed. According to
Portland State University’s
annual population estimate,
the disparity is now stretched
to more than 1,000 people in
2019: 18,415 for Hermiston
versus 17,020 for Pendleton.
While Pendleton has
struggled with a housing
shortage and an aging popula-
tion, Hermiston’s growth has
been driven by demographic
change.
Between the 2000 and
2010 censuses, Hermiston’s
white population grew mod-
estly while its Hispanic and
Latino population grew by
more than 70%. The Latino
population growth spurred
the city of Hermiston to estab-
lish a Hispanic Advisory
Committee in 2012.
Although Hermiston’s ris-
ing population has led to new
economic opportunities like
Amazon, it’s also led to some
growing pains.
After successfully passing
bonds to expand school facil-
ities in 1999 and 2008, local
voters rejected a $104 mil-
lion bond in 2017. The dis-
trict had to cut the bond ask
down to $82.7 million in 2019
before voters approved it in
November.
8. Wildfires rage in
Eastern Oregon
The sunny, summer skies
of Eastern Oregon have
become overcast in recent
years, not due to cloud cover-
age, but because of the thick
smoke of wildfi res.
Massive summer wildfi res
have become the norm across
the western United States, and
although Umatilla and Mor-
row counties haven’t gotten it
the worst this decade, they’re
not immune to its effects.
2015 was a particularly
brutal year for wildfi res in
Eastern Oregon. The fi res
at Canyon Creek in Grant
County, Windy Ridge in
Baker County, and Griz-
zly Bear in Wallowa County
burned nearly 300,000 acres
combined.
Prolonged droughts and
intense heat have made mas-
sive forest fi res a risk each
summer, and local fi refi ghters
often join the regional efforts
to extinguish them.
Smoke-choked skies have
become commonplace during
fi re season, and even when the
fi re is hundreds of miles away,
a strong wind can cause local
air quality to plummet.
At one point in August
2018, Pendleton had the worst
air quality in the state due to
several fi res burning in Cen-
tral Washington.
9. Wolves settle, spread
in Oregon
No animal has caused
quite as much contention in
Eastern Oregon than the wolf.
An Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife trail camera
at the Mt. Emily Unit in Uma-
tilla County captured photos
of three wolves of the newly
christened Walla Walla pack
in 2011.
But as wolves contin-
ued to spread throughout the
region, the animals became
an increasingly political topic,
with local ranchers on one
side and environmentalists on
the other.
The issue came to a
head in 2017 when ODFW
approved kill orders for three
wolves from the Harl Butte
pack of Wallowa County and
one more from the Meacham
pack after they preyed on cat-
tle from the Pendleton-based
Cunningham Sheep Co.
As known wolves rose
from 21 in 2010 to 137 in 2018,
ODFW revised its wolf man-
agement plan that includes a
rule that allows Eastern Ore-
gon ranchers to kill wolves
that have attacked their live-
stock twice in the past nine
months.
The state removed East-
ern Oregon wolves from the
endangered species list in
2015 and U.S. Fish and Wild-
life is considering doing the
same for all wolves in the con-
tiguous United States.
10. CTUIR buys two Pendleton
businesses, begins expansion
at resort and casino
When the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation opened the Wild-
horse in 1994, it was a collec-
tion of 100 slot machines in a
fi ve-wide trailer.
With the Wildhorse Resort
and Casino now celebrating
its silver jubilee, the facility
has grown to encompass a
massive gaming fl oor, a hotel
tower, multiple restaurants, a
movie theater, a golf course
and more.
But the Wildhorse isn’t
done growing.
Tribal offi cials spent the
latter part of the decade plan-
ning an expansion, and in
2019, construction offi cially
begun on a new bowling alley
that’s expected to complement
an expanded family enter-
tainment center and movie
theater.
Once the renovations are
complete in 2020, the tribes
expect to expand the facility
further by building a second
hotel tower and a new event
center.
But the CTUIR didn’t
restrict the Wildhorse expan-
sion to reservation boundar-
ies: the tribes also bought the
Pendleton Country Club and
Hamley’s in 2019 with plans
to continue running them.
At a government-to-gov-
ernment conference, Wild-
horse CEO Gary George
explained that the tribal
gaming was hitting a satu-
ration point, so Wildhorse’s
future plans mainly involved
expanding its entertainment
options.
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