Concept

Hermiston, Oregon

Summary
Hermiston (ˈhɜːrməstən) is a city in Umatilla County, Oregon, United States. Its population of 19,973 makes it the largest city in Eastern Oregon. Hermiston is the largest and fastest-growing city in the Hermiston-Pendleton Micropolitan Statistical Area, the eighth largest Core Based Statistical Area in Oregon with a combined population of 92,261 at the 2020 census. Hermiston sits near the junction of I-82 and I-84, and is 7 miles south of the Columbia River, Lake Wallula, and the McNary Dam. The Hermiston area has become a hub for logistics and data center activity due to the proximity of the I-82 and I-84 interchange, Pacific Northwest fiber optic backbone, and low power costs. The city is also known for its watermelons, which are part of its branding. The historic inhabitants of the area were the indigenous Umatilla, Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Columbia Indians, descendants of peoples who lived in this area for thousands of years. The earliest European settlers established a mission near Pendleton in 1847. The territorial government organized Umatilla County in 1862 from the larger Wasco County. On July 10, 1907, the town of Hermiston was incorporated. The original railroad station was named Maxwell, likely after a contemporary official at the railroad company. Colonel J. F. McNaught, an early settler in the region, later named it Hermiston from Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel Weir of Hermiston. The greater Hermiston region began to see irrigated agriculture in 1908, with the completion of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Umatilla Basin Project in the form of Cold Springs Reservoir. The region saw modest growth until the outbreak of World War II, when the Umatilla Army Depot was constructed, causing Hermiston's population to jump from 803 at the 1940 US Census to 3,804 in 1950. The region continued to experience modest growth for the next several decades until the 1970's, when low power costs coupled with the development of center-pivot irrigation resulted in a significant expansion in agricultural acreage put in to potato production.
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