Historical

Joe Burns, back row center, with the Hermiston Development Corporation If E.P. Dodd was Hermiston's town father for its first 50 years, Joe Burns will be remembered as Hermiston's town father for the second 50 years. Following is his obituary from 2015. Joseph Edward “Joe” Burns, 90, died February 5, 2015 at his home in Hermiston. He was born on February 1, 1925 in Portland, Oregon, the

Elmer Perry Dodd was born on the banks of a Boise Valley irrigation canal built by his father. All of his long and useful life he devoted to the pursuit of his conviction that water could and would make the West bloom. He died this week in Hermiston where lush green fields extending to tamed waters of the Columbia River stand as a monument to

The watermelon may be the official symbol of Hermiston, but the onion also deserves its place at the Northeast Oregon dinner table. Before they’re sliced, diced, battered or crunched, onions are grown commercially in more than 20 states. According to the National Onion Association, U.S. farmers plant about 125,000 acres of onions each year, and 20 percent of those hit the soil in Idaho and Eastern

By Cassandra Tate 3/26/2008 HistoryLink.org Essay 8449 The sound of the great Ice Age floods would have been terrifying: some 530 cubic miles of water bursting through a wall of ice more than 2,000 feet high; roaring over Eastern Washington at speeds of up to 80 miles an hour; drilling deep crevices into ancient basalt, stripping away topsoil in some areas, piling it up in others, flinging boulders

  From Northeast Oregon Now, Aug. 15, 2013 Michael Kane This is the story of a humble postcard’s journey from Hermiston to The Dalles to Coeur d’Alene to Florida – and likely many parts unknown – before arriving back in Hermiston 60 years later. Oh yeah – and Frank Harkenrider’s involved. I don’t know the complete history of this remarkable postcard – I only came upon it toward the back

Paddling down the Columbia River on a clear and frosty day in 1805, William Clark saw a round rock, with a flat top and vertical sides. The handsome rock stood seven stories above the surrounding landscape. Struck by the sight, he noted an outcropping “resembling a hat” in his journal entry of Oct. 19. On his hand-drawn map, he placed a dot and labeled it “Hat Rock.” Hat Rock,

From McNary Dam to the #MeToo Movement, a Hollywood Icon Endures Hollywood came to celebrate the groundbreaking of McNary Dam in 1947. In April 1947 Janis Paige was crowned “Miss Damsite” and appeared at the ground-breaking ceremony for the dam on the Columbia River at Umatilla, alongside Oregon Gov. Earl Snell and Cornelia Morton McNary, Sen. Charles McNary's widow. In 1941, Congress approved dam construction and a groundbreaking

Russell Lee was an American photojournalist who in 1936 went to work for the federal Farm Security Administration documentation project. The FSA built a remarkable collection of 80,000 photographs of America during the Depression because they hired great photographers—Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans and Gordon Parks, who crossed the U.S. to produce a “visual encyclopedia of American life.” Lee is responsible for

A 20th Century Master Visits Northeast Oregon As she rose to the peak of her creative powers, Dorothea Lange visited Irrigon in 1939 on a trip through Oregon documenting the Great Depression for FDR Working in the crisp fall air, a farmer and his wife caught Dorothea Lange’s eye as they dug sweet potatoes along the Columbia River at Irrigon in October 1939. As part of the legendary