Umatilla River and wheat country in Pendleton
Pendleton sits on the Umatilla River, in a county where wheat is a main crop. This page uses reference and agency sources and does not rank farms or businesses.
The Umatilla River
Wikipedia describes the Umatilla River as an 89-mile tributary of the Columbia River with a basin of about 2,450 square miles. Its headwaters are in the Blue Mountains, where the north and south forks meet within the Umatilla National Forest. It reaches the Columbia near the city of Umatilla, at Lake Umatilla, the reservoir behind John Day Dam. Pendleton, Echo, Stanfield, Hermiston and Umatilla are the cities along its course.
Pendleton lies on both sides of the river. Wikipedia notes that by 1865 Moses Goodwin had built a bridge across it at the settlement called Goodwin's Crossing, and that the river has flooded periodically and caused damage.
Wheat country
Wikipedia credits the arrival of the railroad in 1881 with opening the area to dryland wheat farming. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2022 Census of Agriculture profile for Umatilla County counts 1,616 farms on 1,491,922 acres of land in farms. The county ranks first in Oregon in sales of grains, oilseeds, dry beans and dry peas, at about $174.7 million, and second in vegetables, melons and potatoes, at about $161.4 million. Crops make up 85 percent of its agricultural sales.
Wheat growers are also organized here. The Oregon Wheat Growers League says it was founded in Moro in February 1926 and was the first commodity organization formed in the United States for wheat. The Oregon Wheat site lists a Pendleton address for the League, and describes the Oregon Wheat Commission as a producer-funded and producer-governed program. Both publish current crop information on their own site.