Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near South Pendleton Pendleton, OR

Pendleton is a city in Umatilla County, Oregon, and it is the county seat, incorporated by the Oregon Legislative Assembly on October 25, 1880, with the motto "The Real West".

The 2020 census counted 17,107 residents in Pendleton, a figure that includes approximately 1,600 people incarcerated at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, and the city had 6,402 households, 6,938 housing units of which 7.7 percent were vacant, and a median age of 37.8.

Pendleton is the smaller of the two principal cities of the Hermiston-Pendleton Micropolitan Statistical Area, which covers Morrow and Umatilla counties and had 92,261 residents at the 2020 census.

Explorers under Wilson Price Hunt camped near modern Pendleton on January 8, 1812, William C. McKay established a trading post at the mouth of McKay Creek, and Abram Miller filed a homestead claim in 1862 that Moses Goodwin acquired, naming it "Goodwin's Crossing" and building a bridge across the Umatilla River and a hotel by 1865.

Umatilla County purchased Goodwin's Crossing on December 18, 1868, renamed it Pendleton after politician George H. Pendleton, and made it the county seat.

By 1900 Pendleton's population was 4,406, making it the fourth-largest city in Oregon at the time.

The city was built on both sides of the Umatilla River, which connected it to the Columbia River, and it has a cool semi-arid climate; Pendleton recorded 119 degrees Fahrenheit on August 10, 1898, long Oregon's highest temperature, tied on June 29, 2021 at two other stations.

Pendleton's historic Chinatown was underlain by a network of tunnels that is now a tourist attraction, although the authenticity of the tunnels as a Chinese tunnel system has been questioned.

Pendleton's "Old town" is a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation nearby operate the Wildhorse Resort and Casino and golf course and built the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute.