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Umatilla Voices - Economy

Well, the people here, most all of them got jobs either at Ice Harbor or one of the other dams, the government people. And as the construction people finished up they just moved on to another construction job. Gloria Lampkin, former McNary Dam worker, 1999

At that time in Umatilla County we had probably 25 dairies. Today in 1999 there's not one dairy in Umatilla County still active. . . all of our ground around here used to be 20 acres or 100 acre places . . . we won't see dairies back in this area unless it's big corporate dairies with two or three hundred head of cattle they milk 24 hours a day. . . . I don't know what it takes to make a strong agricultural base. Potatoes are good, or corn is good, the onions they come and they go, but as I look on history I can see those same potato people being in the Idaho area, Oreida, for years, then they kind of drifted down here. . . a lot of these crops, they rob the ground, and you don't put the nutrients back in the ground, and you raise that crop so many years . . . In the old days the philosophy was you'd put melons in seven years, you'd come back with melons. In the meantime you'd raise alfalfa hay or you'd raise something to put the nitrogen back into the ground. Watermelons and potatoes, they take a lot of nitrogen and you have to get it back into there some way. And we got so many chemicals now that do it faster. . . Sam Nobles, Umatilla resident, 1999

I heard life is different, there’s a lot of opportunities for a better life. And I can see it is true, but we have to watch ourselves too. Because you spend your money, it’ll be exactly like in Mexico. . . I have to save for like, during the winter, for November and December, we don’t have very much work on the farms. So I was watching that for myself. Otherwise, I would be in problems trying to get a job during that time. And sometimes it is not the winter, but in some parts after pruning, the farms they don’t have jobs. They let off almost everybody. They have just the bosses, the people who have worked with the tractors. . . putting the chemicals. So we have to wait for a couple weeks or three weeks and then we can move back. And we do the thinning, thinning the apples. And then we work for about a month, and then we start harvesting the cherries, and then the apricots, almost at the same time. They split the cherry and apple crews. Then after that we go back to thinning apples for a couple weeks, and then we don’t have very much work for another three weeks, until the harvest. And after the harvest everything slows down. But some places like Simplot, they have a lot of work. . . Federico Ramos, Umatilla resident, 1999

I'm interested in two things really. Not just the jobs, average forty thousand dollars a year. Those are good jobs. But I'm interested in people having those jobs, moving into my community, buying a home there. . . And then they've got a lifetime job, with a great retirement, you see. . . they become a part of our civic organizations, our churches, our schools, our city government. . . And they're the kind of citizens that build strong communities, because they've got the income for it, they've got the stability, and they're able to buy a house. . . . I think we've been real wise in several things. . . the way we have worked with our planning commission and the council in setting up building regulations. . . To keep this small town livability. . . we insist on lot sizes that are large enough to where you're not crowding everything together. . . we have nice wide streets. . . . I would be tickled to death if they put a Fred Meyer's in here. . . Any large store that would attract people from outside in here. . . Mayor George Hash, 1999

I would like to. . . one day. . . open up talks again with the city of Umatilla, to try to come to a mutual understanding. . . what we're going to have to do is cooperate. So many times we've been in adversarial positions. . . . Now today with all the things that's happening, they're building in that area, they've got the freeway going through there [Umatilla], they've got the prisons that are going in there. I feel that we may be at a crossroads, we might be at a unique [time] that we can begin to develop something that's going to be mutually benficial to the tribe, to the non-Indian community, to the State, to the County. Because the importance of that area - first off you've got Umatilla Indians, you've got Umatilla River, you've got Umatilla County, Umatilla City. Thomas Morning Owl, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, 1999

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