Boardman is a city in Morrow County, Oregon, United States, on the Columbia River and Interstate 84. As of the 2020 census the population was 3,828, the first superintendent of the Oregon State Parks System. Boardman and his wife worked for 13 years to develop irrigation for their land; during those years his wife taught school, and Boardman at times worked on railroad construction projects. The Union Pacific Railroad passed through Boardman, where it had a station. The community was platted in 1916 at about the same time Samuel Boardman went to work for the Oregon State Highway Department and became involved in the development of roadside parks. South of Boardman, the U.S. Army Air Force established a training range in 1941. The Air Force transferred ownership of the range in 1960 to the U.S. Navy and it is now known as the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman. The range is largely used by NAS Whidbey Island and the Oregon National Guard.
During construction of the John Day Dam on the Columbia River in the 1960s, the city had to be moved south, further from the waters of the planned Lake Umatilla. The filling of Lake Umatilla began in April 1968 and was completed later that year, completely inundating the old town. The new townsite cost $1.5million to construct.
Geography
Boardman is in northeastern Oregon, along Interstate 84 south of the Columbia River. The city is above sea level. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are land and , or 9.05%, are water in the Columbia River.
|source 2 = National Weather Service
Demographics
Boardman is part of the Pendleton–Hermiston Micropolitan Statistical Area.
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, Boardman had a population of 3,828. The median age was 27.6 years. 34.2% of residents were under the age of 18 and 6.4% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 109.9 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 113.8 males age 18 and over.
0% of residents lived in urban areas, while 100.0% lived in rural areas.
There were 1,162 households in Boardman, of which 51.8% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 44.4% were married-couple households, 22.3% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 23.8% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 19.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 5.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
! Race !! Number !! Percent
|-
| White || 1,390 || 36.3%
|-
| Black or African American || 27 || 0.7%
|-
| American Indian and Alaska Native || 72 || 1.9%
|-
| Asian || 7 || 0.2%
|-
| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander || 0 || 0%
|-
| Some other race || 1,597 || 41.7%
|-
| Two or more races || 735 || 19.2%
|-
| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) || 2,813 || 73.5%
|}
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 3,220 people, 964 households, and 759 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 1,017 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 60.1% White, 0.7% African American, 0.9% Native American, 2.4% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 33.0% from other races, and 2.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 61.7% of the population.
The Port of Morrow, Oregon's second-largest port, is adjacent to the city and located on the Columbia riverfront. The port property also includes two PGE gas-fired power plants. and shut down in October 2020, marking the closure of the last coal-fired power plant in Oregon after 40 years of service. The Boardman Coal Plant was demolished in 2022. The plant had produced power at a rate of 550 megawatts and was the largest single point of emission of greenhouse gases in Oregon. The Umatilla Chemical Depot, which includes the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, is east of the city, northwest of the intersection of I-84 and Interstate 82. The Irrigon Fish Hatchery is east of Boardman. Threemile Canyon Farms is the largest farm located in Boardman.
thumb|Part of AWS's datacenters in Umatilla/Boardman
thumb|Part of AWS's datacenters in Umatilla/Boardman, showing three datacenters with a fourth under construction
The Oregonian reported in November 2008 that Amazon was building a large data center at the Port of Morrow. The data center was to have a dedicated 10-megawatt electrical substation. A website focused on data centers suggested the Boardman site was created in response to the rapid growth of Amazon Web Services; earlier in 2008, Amazon had announced that Amazon S3 was storing 29 billion objects (such as IMDb tables). The Amazon data center at the Port of Morrow began operating in 2011 as one of three Amazon data centers in the region at the time. The project made Boardman the second Oregon city along the Columbia River to host a power-hungry data center for web services; Google already had a similar center in The Dalles. According to an August 2018 article in the East Oregonian, Amazon has two data centers in Boardman and one in Umatilla and is proposing to build four more data centers in the region. The three data centers in Boardman and Umatilla correspond to the three availability zones in AWS US-West-2 (Oregon) region.
Since 2007, Alto Ingredients, formerly known as Pacific Ethanol, has operated an ethanol plant in Boardman. It can produce up to of ethanol a year from grains. ZeaChem has built a demonstration biorefinery at the Port of Morrow with a capacity of up to of ethanol a year from wood waste. However, in April 2013, less than a month after start-up at the demonstration plant, ZeaChem halted production, citing funding problems.
Coal export
Ambre Energy, a company based in Australia, proposed in 2011 to use the Port of Morrow as a transfer point for shipping U.S. coal to Asia. Ambre wants to export up to of coal per year from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. It would ship the coal by train to Boardman, where it would be loaded on barges and hauled down the Columbia River to the Port of St. Helens. There it would be transferred to ocean-going ships headed for China, South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries.
The Ambre plan generated controversy among proponents touting economic benefits and opponents fearing environmental damage. In 2014, the Oregon Department of State Lands denied the company a necessary permit for the project,
Transportation
Boardman Airport, owned by the Port of Morrow, is southwest of the city. It is a public airport used mainly for transient and local general aviation. Midcolumbia Bus Company are also in the Boardman area.
References
External links
- Entry for Boardman in the Oregon Blue Book