Biohazard Cleanup Near Boardman Historic District Boardman, OR

Boardman is an incorporated city in Morrow County, Oregon, on the Columbia River and Interstate 84, incorporated on May 20, 1921, and it is the largest town in Morrow County.

The 2020 census counted 3,828 residents in Boardman, up from 3,220 in 2010, and the city had 1,162 households in the 2020 census.

Boardman was homesteaded in 1903 by Samuel H. Boardman, the first superintendent of the Oregon State Parks System, who with his wife worked for 13 years to develop irrigation for their land.

The Union Pacific Railroad passed through Boardman, where it had a station, the community was platted in 1916, and the Boardman post office opened in 1916.

South of Boardman, the U.S. Army Air Force established a training range in 1941, transferred to the U.S. Navy in 1960 and now known as the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman, 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, and the filling of Lake Umatilla in 1968 completely inundated the old town, with the new townsite costing 1.5 million dollars to construct.

Boardman lies 25 miles west of Hermiston and 164 miles east of Portland, covers 4.43 square miles at an elevation of 308 feet, and has a steppe climate.

Boardman is part of the Pendleton-Hermiston Micropolitan Statistical Area, and its motto is 'On the river, on the way.'

The Port of Morrow, Oregon's second-largest port, is adjacent to Boardman on the Columbia riverfront, and its property includes two Portland General Electric gas-fired power plants.

Portland General Electric's Boardman Coal Plant, which opened in 1980, shut down in October 2020 as the last coal-fired power plant in Oregon after 40 years of service, and it was demolished in 2022.