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Tum-A-Lum Lumber is open for business Wednesday
morning, March 30, 2022, at its new location at 2470
S.E. Court Ave., Pendleton, the former Gilbert Auto site.
Phil Wright/East Oregonian
By ERICK PETERSON AND
ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
UMATILLA COUNTY — The
increase in gas prices has local city
government looking at ways to meet
the bottom line.
Regular unleaded in Pendleton
and Hermiston is around the mid-$4
per gallon for regular unleaded.
Diesel is around a dollar more per
gallon.
The AAA Gas Prices website,
gasprices.aaa.com, listed the aver-
age price of gas in Umatilla County
on Tuesday, March 29, at about
$4.42 a gallon, which in Oregon
puts the cost on the cheaper end of
the spectrum. Statewide, the aver-
age was $4.72.
AAA listed the per gallon price
at approximately $4.01 a month ago
and $3.16 a year ago.
“From a straight city operations
perspective, we’re certainly taking
those things into account in our
budgeting for the upcoming year
for fuel costs of operating vehi-
cles, but where we’re really feeling
it the most is in some of our capi-
tal construction projects,” Mark
Morgan, Hermiston’s assistant city
manager, said.
He explained that the city
recently was notifi ed of a diesel
fuel surcharge for asphalt for the
foreseeable future. Projects such as
paving, he said, are very oil-inten-
sive are seeing more infl ation than
others.
“One of the ways that we manage
that is that if we start to feel pres-
sure on a price is that we will break
a project down in to component
parts, and try to identify what are
the most critical parts, then when
we bid the project, we will list some
of the smaller parts as alternatives,”
he said. “That way, we have the abil-
ity to complete the core project on
budget by just jettisoning some of
those extra components that might
be able to be pushed off for some-
thing in the future.”
When taking this approach, “you
also always have to be cognizant of
whether that part that you’re push-
ing off to the future may actually
come down in price in the future, or
you may be shooting yourself in the
foot by making it more complicated
and more expensive in the future.”
In Pendleton, department heads
who could be aff ected by gas prices
are taking a wait-and-see approach.
With the city appropriating more
than $7 million for this year’s street
construction season, the Pendleton
See Gas, Page A7
STRETCHES OUT
Business expands
footprint, gives
new life to former
car dealership site
BACKSTORY ON
THE NAME
By JOHN TILLMAN
East Oregonian
P
ENDLETON —
On an early after-
noon Tuesday,
March 29, front-
end loaders criss-
crossed the parking
lot of Tum-a-Lum
Lumber in Pendleton. Trailers
took up multiple parking spots.
Four days before its offi cial grand
opening, the building material
supply company’s new premises
were a beehive of activity.
Tum-A-Lum’s move to 2470
S.E. Court Ave. aff orded the
business 4.5 times the retail
space and almost three times
the acreage.
The migration took place
place last summer from its
historic location at 432 S.E.
Dorion Ave. That site, across
from the Umatilla County
Courthouse, covered just 1.25
acres with only 2,000 square
feet of retail space.
Branch Manager Shane
Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
Tum-A-Lum Lumber store manager Shane Reinhart stands in the
design center Tuesday, March 29, 2022, of the business’s new Pendleton
location, 2470 S.E. Court Ave. The store, which has a 96-year history in
the community, will hold a grand opening celebration April 2.
Reinhart said, “On Dorion, I
didn’t have an offi ce.”
The new location at the
former Gilbert Auto site
includes 3.5 acres of asphalt and
buildings in an overall 9 acres.
Retail space is 9,000 square
feet, plus offi ces and cubicles
for contractor consultations.
The shift followed extensive
remodeling and new construc-
tion. The company took down
part of an existing building,
then added onto it to support the
vast lumber yard.
“We gutted the Gilbert Auto
showroom. Tore out the wiring,
took down walls. A complete
makeover,” Reinhart said.
The new store offers a
full hardware line, includ-
ing a design center with cabi-
nets, countertops, doors and
windows. It also features an
outdoor lawn and garden care
center, with a full nursery.
Tum-A-Lum Lumber founder
J. M. Crawford thought
“tum-a-lum” meant “spread-
ing waters’’ in the Umatilla
language, and “Tum-A-Lum
Lumber in Walla Walla, Wash-
ington” sounded lyrical.
Gretchen Kern, linguist at the
Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation,
said the word “tamalam’’
refers to a “rocky bar in a river,
dry stream, gravel bar, rocks
by a creek, pile of rocks, rocky
bottom or gravel.”
She added, “Tum-A-Lum’s
founder’s interpretation may
have come from the fact that
water tends to spread or fl ow
around such rocks. Tamalam
also was a place name refer-
ring to Plymouth, Washing-
ton, and Milton-Freewater.”
TAL Holdings owner,
Bill Cornelius, Jr. of Vancou-
ver, preferred not to state the
purchase price, but public
records suggest the site went for
less than its assessed valuation
of $1.8 million. The company
made money on the sale of its
old location.
“We tried to buy it previ-
ously,” Reinhart commented.
See Lumber, Page A7
‘Hidden treasure’
EOU, local
advocates secure
funding to restore
historic staircase
By DAVIS CARBAUGH
The Observer
LA GRANDE — A treasured
architecture feature in La Grande
will be preserved for generations
to come.
A $100 million rural infra-
structure package passed by the
Oregon Legislature in March
granted $4 million to save East-
ern Oregon University’s Grand
Staircase, highlighting years of
advocacy by the university, local
individuals and regional organi-
zations. Upon deteriorating into
an unusable relic of the past, plans
are now underway to renovate and
protect the staircase as a critical
element to Eastern’s campus.
“We’ve worked at a lot of
different angles trying to find
funding for it,” said Tim Seydel,
Eastern’s vice president of univer-
sity advancement. “It’s an incredi-
bly beautiful piece of architecture
that is one of a kind. We just kept
working at it.”
Cause worth fi ghting for
The Eastern Oregon Normal
School, a college for aspiring
See Stairs, Page A7
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group
The view from the top of Eastern Oregon University’s Grand Staircase on
March 23, 2022, shows how the structure once restored will again con-
nect the campus with the community of La Grande.