HERMISTON -- A humble watermelon slice graces the side of the municipal water tank. The town has no golf course or country club. Its tallest building is Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.'s 73-foot seed-cleaning elevator.

But whatever

got seems to flourish in desert sunshine and sand. The city has jumped through the looking glass to become eastern Oregon's biggest town, bumping aside the rowdy rodeo and wheat town of

, 25 miles to the east.

"It's taken us 103 years," said Frank Harkenrider, a Hermiston city councilman and former mayor.

Hermiston is now bigger by 133 people -- driven by an uncommonly young population and a diversifying economy.

Its population stands at 16,745, according to the 2010 Census -- a jump of 27 percent -- bucking eastern Oregon's trend of dreary declines or very small gains. Numbers diminished in the past decade in Baker, Wallowa, Malheur, Harney and Grant counties.

Hermiston's ascendancy is a definite bright spot -- but don't expect much reaction other than a yawn from Pendleton's cowboys. With its world-famous, 100-year-old

and Wild West color and pageantry, Pendleton has a swagger that Hermiston still can't match.

"Being bigger is not always better," said Randy Severe, a custom saddle maker and last year's president of the Pendleton Round-Up Association.

High school athletics and rodeo matter more than which town has the most people, Severe said.

Population of

Eastern Oregon cities

City 2000 2010 % chg. Hermiston 13,154 16,745 27.2 Pendleton 16,354 16,612 1.5 La Grande 12,327 13,082 6.1 Ontario 10,985 11,366 3.4 Baker City 9,860 9,828 -0.3 Milton-Freewater 6,470 7,050 8.9 Umatilla 4,978 6,906 38.7 Nyssa 3,163 3,267 3.2 Boardman 2,855 3,220 12.7 Burns 3,064 2,806 -8.4 Lakeview 2,474 2,294 7.2 Union 1,926 2,121 10.1 Stanfield 1,979 2,043 3.2 Enterprise 1,895 1,940 2.3 Vale 1,976 1,874 -5.1 Irrigon 1,702 1,826 7.2 John Day 1,821 1,744 -4.2 Elgin 1,654 1,711 3.4 Hines 1,623 1,563 -3.6 Pilot Rock 1,532 1,502 -1.9 Heppner 1,395 1,291 -7.4 Athena 1,221 1,126 -7.7 Joseph 1,054 1,081 2.5 Mission CDP (Umatilla Reservation) 1,019 1,037 1.7 Island City 916 989 7.9 Prairie City 1,080 909 -15.8 Wallowa 869 808 -7 Canyon City 669 703 5 Echo 650 699 7.5 Weston 717 667 -6.9 Cove 594 552 -7 Mount Vernon 595 527 -11.4 Fossil 469 473 0.8 Huntington 515 440 -14.5 North Powder 489 439 -10.2 Haines 426 416 -2.3 Wasco 381 410 7.6 Ione 321 329 2.4 Umapine n/a 315 n/a Imbler 284 306 7.7 Halfway 337 288 -14.5 Lexington 263 238 -9.5 Lostine 263 213 -19 Sumpter 171 204 19.2 Seneca 223 199 -10.7 Long Creek 228 197 13.5 Ukiah 255 186 -27 Helix 183 184 0.5 Jordan Valley 239 181 -24.6 Adrian 147 177 20.4 Spray 140 160 14.28 Dayville 138 149 7.9 Summerville 117 135 15.3 Crane CDP n/a 129 n/a Monument 151 128 15.2 Unity 131 71 -45.8 Cayuse CDP (Umatilla Reservation) 59 68 15.25 Wallowa Lake CDP n/a 62 n/a Granite 24 38 58.3

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

A working town

Established in 1907, this dusty, upstart farming town and its older rival Pendleton, established in 1880, are so different they might as well have hatched on separate planets.

Pendleton boasts an end-of-frontier brick downtown, visitor attractions that include an intact 19th-century opium den and a labyrinth of Chinese tunnels, the picturesque Hamley & Co. Western store and the nearby Wildhorse Casino and Resort on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Hermiston, unlike Pendleton, is no place to visit for fun and relaxation. Getting to it entails a six-mile drive from Interstate 84 through potato, watermelon and wheat fields, only to find a city center replete with stacks of hogwire, Powder River fences, creosote-covered corner posts and livestock chutes in a farm equipment lot.

"This is a working town," said longtime Hermiston City Manager Ed Brookshier. "Most people come here to work."

But Hermiston has an enviable demographic that Pendleton doesn't. The Census revealed a surprisingly youthful vibrancy: 31 percent of the population is younger than 18 -- a 35 percent increase in the young crowd in the last decade.

And 35 percent of Hermiston's residents are Latino, up from 24 percent a decade ago. They work in agriculture, food processing, manufacturing, retail and every other economic venue in the community, and, with a tradition of big families, are helping fuel the town's population growth.

In Pendleton, 22 percent of residents are younger than 18 and fewer than 10 percent are Latino.

Young population

Underscoring Hermiston's youthfulness, the under-18 set nationally grew only 2.6 percent in the past decade, said Charles Rynerson, demographic analyst for Portland State University.

And in every one of Oregon's 36 counties, the under-18 population declined or grew more slowly than the adult population -- including Multnomah County, where the proportion of younger people dropped 1.8 percent in the last decade, he said.

Hermiston also bucked a national trend by posting a residential vacancy rate (the number of its empty homes and apartments) that fell from 8 percent to 5 percent, Rynerson said. Across the country, vacancy rates were higher than a decade ago, partly because of the mortgage crisis.

"Young families and low vacancy rates -- that usually points to a healthy economy," Rynerson said.

Hermiston possesses another refreshing quality, Brookshier said. It's a place "without artificial strata," meaning no country club set, no self-appointed cultural elites.

Pendleton, in contrast, has a golf course and hereditary members of a rural aristocracy that maintains a multi-generational family tradition of serving on the Round-Up board and court, and putting on the nighttime Happy Canyon Indian Pageant year after year.

Population of Eastern Oregon counties

Click on a county to see population changes

David Badders/The Oregonian

Diversifying economy

Agriculture and food processing have long been the underpinning of Hermiston's economy. About 300,000 acres of irrigated farmland across Oregon and Washington's arid Columbia River basin arguably make up one of the world's most high-tech growing regions. Satellites, computers, automated weather stations and aircraft-mounted scanners monitor water use and pumping power.

But Hermiston is in transition, too. The town and surroundings have developed a diversified base that's attracted billions of dollars in new investments, hundreds of new jobs and millions in annual payrolls over the last several decades.

Business and corporate reps tell Chet Prior, the chairman of the nonprofit Hermiston Development Corp.: "'It's kind of refreshing to find a location where people really want you. We just don't run into that everywhere.'"

Oregon's top 25 cities overall

Oregon's top 25 cities overall

Portland: 583,776

Eugene: 156,185

Salem: 154,637

Gresham: 105,594

Hillsboro: 91,611

Beaverton: 89,803

Bend: 76,639

Medford: 74,907

Springfield: 59,403

Corvallis: 54,462

Albany: 50,158

Aloha CDP: 49,425

Tigard: 48,035

Lake Oswego: 36,619

Keizer: 36,478

Grants Pass: 34,533

McMinnville: 32,187

Oregon City: 31,859

Redmond: 26,215

Tualatin: 26,054

West Linn: 25,109

Woodburn: 24,080

Newberg: 22,068

Roseburg: 21,181

Forest Grove: 21,083

Source: 2010 U.S. Census

Example: The Pentagon in 1941 began stockpiling bombs, rockets and ammunition 11 miles west of town on what's now the Umatilla Chemical Depot. In March 1944, a 500-pound bomb accidentally exploded, killing five men and a woman. Townspeople put up few objections 18 years later when the base was converted to a repository for what became 11.5 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons arsenal.

Location is plus and minus

Paradoxically for a town miles from a freeway on-ramp, part of Hermiston's economic attraction is its location. Shippers can quickly access Interstates 84 and 82, U.S. 395, a Union Pacific main line and two Columbia River ports for freight transit.

It hasn't hurt that the Washington towns of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland 30 miles north on I-82 were among the nation's biggest job-growth communities in 2010, and are awash in federal money because of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's cleanup.

On the darker side, Hermiston and its rural suburbs and the smaller nearby towns of Umatilla, Stanfield, Echo and Irrigon -- with a combined population of about 40,000 -- are notorious to police for illegal distributions of crystal methamphetamine. The area is federally listed as an Oregon High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

Crime families are attracted by the transportation corridors and scarcity of law enforcement. Only .36 police officers per 1,000 residents patrol Hermiston's rural suburbs, compared to 1.5 to 1.8 per 1,000 nationally, said Deputy Sgt. Tawin Compton of the Umatilla County Sheriff's Department.

Still, Prior hopes Hermiston's ballooning population wins the town some respect. The state's elected officials, during infrequent trips to eastern Oregon, tend to make a beeline for Pendleton.

That might change now.

"We've got to start to promote some relationships with people who are important in the governing of Oregon," he said.

--

Big employers in and around Hermiston:

--

, a 1,725-inmate medium-security state prison outside the city limits with a 440-person staff.

-- A

locomotive maintenance facility.

-- A brace of natural gas-powered electrical generating plants operated by

and

. The latter is adding another generating unit.

-- A vast

wholesale distribution center. It and Union Pacific's maintenance facility have brought almost 2,000 jobs to Umatilla County's west end.

-- A

"cross dock" dispatch center is under construction and likely will add 100-plus jobs this summer.

-- A

expansion will add 100 more jobs.

-- A $9.1 million, 30,000-square-foot

is under construction near Hermiston Municipal Airport and could enroll as many as 500 students in four-year academic programs next fall.

-- The Oregonian