In this edition of The Other Oregon we bring you some stories about places that have a big impact on the rural communities where they are located.

• Portland sends all of its trash to rural Oregon, and the 2,005 residents of Gilliam County could not be happier. A decision in 1988 by county officials to build a landfill to take Portland’s trash has paid big dividends for the county.

Columbia Ridge Landfill, opened in 1990, has gone on to become the county’s largest employer. It pays the county $1.5 million in host fees a year and uses waste gases to generate electricity.

• The tiny town of Spray in Wheeler County has only 139 residents. Joni Kabana is a relative newcomer to the area, having moved to town six years ago from Portland after a wide-ranging career in high tech and a decade of charity work in Africa.

She had a vision for a building that was once at the center of community life in the town.

Kabana bought the old Spray General Store and has turned it into an arts and community center that has become a gathering place for locals and an event space that brings urban tourists to town.

• Shortly before the start of World War II, the government built the Umatilla Army Depot out on the scrub of the Columbia Plateau east of Hermiston.

Throughout the war the depot was a storage facility for munitions destined for the Pacific Theater and later the Korean War. When the Cold War heated up in the 1960s, the Army brought in thousands of munitions loaded with deadly nerve gas.

Those munitions have now been neutralized and after decades of storing weapons of war, thousands of acres are being taken over by the county for economic development and habitat conservation.

On behalf of everyone at The Other Oregon, we wish you your family a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.