Gallery 5: Hermiston in the Early 1940s

Northeast Oregon Now
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Depot Photos
Construction workers are seen here in front of an igloo under construction at the Umatilla Army Depot. The Library of Congress has dozens of photos taken by photographer Russell Lee during the depot's construction in the early 1940s.
PHOTOS COURESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A young girl cleans up inside one of the temporary housing units built for construction workers at the Umatilla Army Depot.
A young girl cleans up inside one of the temporary housing units built for construction workers at the Umatilla Army Depot.
Hermiston School 2
A school house in Hermiston around 1941. It didn’t take long for Hermiston to run out of room for all the new students.
Hermiston School
There wasn’t enough room for all the students in Hermiston, so many children ended up attending school in the basement of a church.
Hermiston School 5
The school board didn’t have adequate transportation for all the children of workmen at depot and, consequently, many did not attend school.
Hermiston Post Office
Eight hundred people got mail at this post office before the depot boom. During the boom, as many as 12,000 received mail in Hermiston.
Post office
When the defense boom started, the post office at Hermiston employed three people. It soon had a workforce of 16 to handle all the mail.

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