Long Before Intel, Ronler Acres And The Land Had A Rich History

Taking a break from the present can be very healing for me.  Remembering the origins from which we came is not only a chance to reflect on the valley that was, but also to teach those who were not here, which is most of our readers, what’s in a name and place.  Today, an Orenco area lesson on one of the most important and famous places in the Pacific NW.  Ronler Acres.

Here is what exists today in Hillsboro, Oregon.  Although the facilities have many names, we locals call the entire site Ronler Acres.

The Present: Most Advanced Facility In the World

Intel’s Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, is one of the most advanced semiconductor fabrication sites in the world and serves as the cornerstone of Intel’s U.S. manufacturing and R&D operations. Spanning over 500 acres with multiple interconnected fabs, including the cutting-edge D1X Mod3, Ronler Acres is home to Intel’s most advanced EUV lithography tools and serves as the primary development site for next-generation process nodes such as Intel 18A. Its research and pilot production efforts shape global semiconductor technology roadmaps, often setting the stage for future high-volume manufacturing elsewhere. With billions invested, it is not only crucial to Intel’s IDM 2.0 strategy but also a symbol of U.S. efforts to restore domestic chip leadership amid global competition. In terms of technological sophistication and R&D depth, Ronler Acres is rivaled only by facilities like TSMC’s Fab 18 and Samsung’s Pyeongtaek complex.

Let there be no doubt– this is the heart of Semiconductor Technology in the US, and Oregon and the people of Hillsboro rely on the Ronler Acres facility for our economic well-being.

The Past:  What’s In The Name and What Came Before

As I always do, let me acknowledge that this place, our home, the Tualatin Valley, gets its name from the First Nation people—the Atfalati—and you can learn about them here in our previous story.

Remembering Our Indigenous People Everyday

This place was their home for tens of thousands of years.  And geologists and historians claim they were not here before the great Missoula Floods, which ended about 13,000 years ago.  I depart and say they were.  The valley was under 400 to 700 feet of water for two thousand years.  We have reasons to believe they moved with the water.  Nonetheless, this place, and Ronler Acres, was their home.  As a child, I found arrowheads whenever the farmers plowed the fields there.  One weekend adventure there in the early 1970s, we found an authentic clay pot buried in the marsh.  That marsh is there today, next to the Fab at the corner of Evergreen and Century.

Early settlers and pioneers overran the natives and pushed them off to a reservation. Disease spread by early explorers did most of the damage. By the 1840s, the lands that make up Ronler Acres were settled by three of the earliest Pioneers, who took this land because of its excellent soils.  Caleb Wilkins and his wife, Kitty, filed the Donation Land Claim on this land.  Caleb was a retired Rocky Mountain Fir Trapper. He married Catherine, a Nez Perce woman and the daughter of a sub-chief of that tribe.  Her Sisters came down the gorge from the mountains with their husbands, and early Pioneers Joseph Meek (Virginia) and Robert “Doc: Newell.  Each family would settle in the immediate area and spend decades clearing the land and proving it to be among the most productive farms on Earth.

Over time, the Wilkins, like most pioneer families, sold off the land. In their case, a willing buyer showed up about 1900, looking for a significant land holding to support growing and harvesting fruit trees and other ornamentals. By 1908, Archibald McGill, the landman and lead partner for the Oregon Nursery Company, had bought the property, worked up the spoils, planted them, and built the start of a company town he and his partner Malcolm McDionald named ORENCO.

After establishing itself as the world’s largest grower of fruit trees, the big company and little town enjoyed a nice run.  Over 600 people lived and worked in Orenco, which hit a crescendo in the late 1920s.  By the early 1930s, orders had dropped off, and the town eventually went bankrupt. The company closed the shop, and several key employees started their own nurseries.  People like Chris Rich, the nursery manager, became very successful, and so did his family members.

The Oregon Nursery Company sold its holdings, which included these lands (400-plus acres) and the Malcolm McDonald Estate, to the Johnson family. The estate, which was 90 acres, gave life to McDonald’s mansion, which, by my book, is the finest home ever built in greater Hillsboro. You all might know this estate today as the Orenco Woods Nature Park, where the mansion still sits, waiting for its day to come back to life.  The park and the home are owned and operated by the Hillsboro Parks Department and are very popular.

KEY POINT: The Oregon Nursery Company was by far the largest employer ever established in Washington County at that time.  In addition, McDonald and McGill personally orchestrated the rerouting of the Oregon Electric Railway rail alignment to curve the track to the North from its planned Baseline Road alignment. This allowed the town of Orenco to have a train depot where workers could come and go, as well as siding in front of the packing shed for loading millions of young trees, which would be carried off to Portland to be shipped worldwide.  The Oregon Nursery Company’s production and growing lands lasted about 30 years before a major change came, and it ended.  The Train ran from 1908 to the very late 1930s- and it ended as well.  Think about that and what we are dealing with today – Ronler Acres which is the land we are talking about, was home to the largest employer, and the train depot from 1908-1937 apx.   Both left and went out of business.  In 1994 Intel opens Ronler Acres making the company the largest employer in the Region.  Four years later the MAX light rail begins running again on the very same tracks and alignment that the Oregon Electric had run on for so many years.

Back to the Future -Ronler Acres Is Born- But Who Is Ron?

Atfalati’s, Wilkins, Oregon Nursery Company, Johnsons—a lot happened to these 600+ acres. But if the land had a story to tell as a result, what would come next would make the property truly legendary.

Origin of the Name “Ronler Acres”

The name “Ronler Acres” dates back to the late 1950s and is tied to the original developer’s family. Ralph and Ruth Fowler bought the property from the Johnsons and were looking to make big bucks subdividing land and building homes.  Something that few people did in the west suburbs of Portland back then, and certainly not in Hillsboro, which was “too far out”.  Fowler platted the subdivision in 1959 and recorded four very distinct plats.  One was a joint venture with the Glaske family, who had purchased part of the Johnsons.

They named the Subdivision of 880 +- lots after their youngest son, Ronald.  Thus, Ronler Acres earned its name. “Ronler” combines Ronald’s name with a portion of the family’s surname, Fowler. This coined name was affixed to the planned 360-acre tract as “Ronler Acres”, giving the subdivision a personal touch from its founders.

The Fowlers platted the property in 4 distinct plats. They began marketing hundreds of residential lots – about a quarter-acre in size – to buyers worldwide.  The 800 lots were sold to hundreds of investors and people anxious to build their suburban dream homes at great prices.  Promises were made that, soon after closing, roads, sewers, and other infrastructure would be installed.  This speculative approach was highly unusual, as typically, a developer would build infrastructure first.  But as you may have guessed, the promised improvements never materialized.

The Fowlers knew that Americans desired to move to the suburbs. Growth was starting to push into Hillsboro and cities like it.  The community at that time had not seen subdivisions on its rural fringes.   Ronler Acres was a monstrous project. However, without upfront investment in streets or utilities, Ronler Acres was just lines on a plat map rather than an actual community. Only one single-family house (and one duplex) was ever built on the entire tract.

When I moved to Orenco / Hillsboro as a kid in the late 1960s, Ronler Acres was overgrown.  Some of it was farmed, but the rest was brushy and marshy.  The roads have been roughed in with a cat.  Some had gravel.  But the place turned wild again 10 years after the developers ran off with the money.  We, the Orenco kids from the dog-patch, would ride our horses, mini-bikes, and motorcycles across the tracks and explore.  All of us were armed with 22 rifles- even kids 8 or 9 would be loaded up.  And besides shooting, cans, bottles, squirrels, and an occasional ring-necked pheasant (which there were hundreds of in the area), we did not mess around.  Most of us had taken hunter safety in those days, as kids, or at Middle School, where it was offered in the old Hillsboro High School rifle range.  The Folwers’ thievery and false promises had given us a playground.  High Schoolers were watching the submarine races out there, and it was easy to hide and “watch the stars”.  More than a few babies can be tied to Ronler Acres. A radio-controlled airplane pad was put out there.  We launched model rockets, too.  And of course, dumping and abandoned cars were standard.  You see, this was not Hillsboro or Orenco.  It was in the County and off the main roads, and once you drove into the narrow streets that had been graded, and some gravelled, you could easily disappear- and frankly, no one cared.  It was awesome, except for the poor landowners.  Most of them could not even find their lots.

Let me share a couple of photos to give you a visual context for what I am talking about.

The 1980s and 1990s Bring the Story Forward:

Below is the Ronler Acres land in he 1980s, and you can see the motorcycle and off-road tracks, the old gravelled roads, and the agrarian setting around it.  Also, the buildings going up there are Fujitsu and NEC.  They, along with Epson and Shin-Etsu Handotai, created the whole Silicon Forest name, as they joined Tektronix and then Intel to make Oregon’s tech industry a force.  And it happened right here at Ronler Acres.

As explained above, the place was a mess.  Landowners tried everything to build. Some bought dozens of lots, and many just let their land return to the county on tac foreclosure.  However, with no sewer or water, the county refused to issue permits.  I started my real estate career in 1982 and had my offices 1 mile from Ronler Acres. In the early 1980s, I was often trying to help people sell. Some investors bought. Little if anything worked.  The government had all the cards, and the economy of the 1980s was just not good enough to get aggressive and fix the problem.

Facing this “blight”, the City of Hillsboro stepped in with a bold plan. In 1988, the city designated Ronler Acres as an urban renewal area.  The goal was to “un-blight” the failed subdivision by buying or consolidating the myriad of tiny lots and preparing the land for proper development. A 300-acre Urban Renewal District (URD) was officially formed in 1989 to encompass Ronler Acres. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hillsboro officials worked to assemble the patchwork of lots from hundreds of owners, a complex process often cited as a significant planning challenge. Then-Planning Commissioner (and future mayor) Tom Hughes was part of the team that painstakingly consolidated the Ronler Acres lots, later recalling the subdivision as a cautionary tale of speculative sprawl. By mid-1994, the city had negotiated purchase agreements for about 90% of the properties, clearing the way for large-scale redevelopment. This municipal effort laid the groundwork for a dramatic turnaround for Ronler Acres.

I was involved in dozens of those sales in my 20s. At a very young age, this opened my eyes to things like Urban Renewal, how cities use it, and how Hillsboro was changing.  Riding on the limited successes of the initial tech expansions (the Japanese firms effectively left by the 1990s), the acquisition and consolidation of the Ronler Acres Plats set Hillsboro and Washington County up as a tech powerhouse.  Tom Hughes was a significant factor in this process.  So was Mayor Gordon Faber. And even more so, it was the work of Hillsboro Planning Director Wink Brooks and Hillsboro Economic Development Director David Lawrence.    I was lucky, I suppose, to be on the brokerage end because I got to learn.  I was able to represent people who owned lots in Ronler Acres.  Some came to me scared that the City of Hillsboro would take their lot(s).  The words Eminent Domain were tossed around a lot.  I am proud to say I helped over 50 people out of their lots.  Some owned as many as 10.  And Wink Brooks and David Lawrence made it work. I helped handle some of the last lots that gave Hillsboro the entire plat.  In an incredible grinding effort, the City of Hillsboro ended the mess.

Intel’s Acquisition and the High-Tech Transformation (1990s)

The revival of Ronler Acres came in the 1990s when Intel Corporation selected the site for its expansion, forever changing the area’s fate. In September 1994, Intel announced plans to buy roughly 270 acres at the north end of Ronler Acres to build new semiconductor fabrication facilities.  This move was contingent on local support: Washington County officials approved a generous $52 million property tax break (under Oregon’s Strategic Investment Program) to attract Intel’s investment.  Intel and the City of Hillsboro struck a deal in November 1994, $7.25 million (about $27,000 per acre), which was what the City of Hillsboro paid for it.  The company also agreed to fund critical infrastructure, providing a $5.2 million low-interest loan to the City for improvements in the area.   These funds helped build out roads (such as extending NW Evergreen Road along the north of the site, NW Butler Road on the south, and 229th Avenue on the east side of Ronler Acres). They contributed to a new fire station to serve the growing district.

Indeed, the Ronler Acres campus rapidly became Intel’s most advanced semiconductor facility worldwide and a cornerstone of Oregon’s “Silicon Forest” tech industry.  By the late 1990s, huge cleanroom buildings and cranes dominated what was once an empty field, turning Ronler Acres into the biggest construction site in Oregon at the time.  Intel’s presence brought thousands of jobs and spurred ancillary development in the vicinity.

Notably, the remaining land of the urban renewal area (mostly between Cornell Road and Butler Road) was retained by Pacific Realty Associates (PacTrust), Hillsboro’s development partner, and soon transformed into the Orenco Station neighborhood!  That 190-acre mixed-use project – with homes, parks, and shops built around a new light-rail stop – became a nationally recognized model for walkable suburban design  In short, Intel’s arrival in 1994–95 catalyzed the full build-out of Ronler Acres: part as a sprawling high-tech campus, and part as a vibrant residential/commercial district next door.

Now you know how Ronler Acres got its name.  You know it was so much more than just a piece of land.  Intel didn’t show up and build.  They were lured here.  And they were offered $52 million to do it.  Nowadays, you must provide billions to make something of that magnitude happen.    And I hope you appreciate the lesson about the Atfalati.  If Intel wanted to show respect for them, the company could have.  I believe it has been a missed opportunity for the computer giant not to see that connection and find a way to honor it. In these times of struggle for Team Blue, one has to wonder if Karma isn’t at play here. Truthfully, they do not even know this history I just taught you.  They do not even know who the Atfalati people are. Or the Wilkins story; Catherine was Nez Perce and hundreds of miles from her people when she broke the land and her body so that they could do their thing there now.  They don’t know about Orenco, the Johnsons, the pot I found, the arrowheads, the airplane tracks, or that the kids lost their playground and make-out spot.  Corporations do not know, and this one over the years has proven that it does not care.  Jobs go as quickly as they come.  Heads roll when things are tough.  Wall Street and investors rule decisions.  And that is not fair to the great people who work at Intel and have significantly contributed to our world, only to be stepped on.   If companies acted like good people and showed they cared, connected, and accepted that karma, balance, and the golden rules are real, they would be much more prosperous. I would like that for Intel and its staff.  I really, truly would.

For me, Ronler Acres is a lesson.  History repeats itself.  Companies and Trains come, and they have a life cycle, and then they go.  And it is happening again.  And we can ruin good land- cover it with cement and asphalt.  In exchange for many jobs, we can look the other way: while chemicals are spewed into the air, home prices skyrocket, and the town becomes a city with big-city problems.  And the land will never come back.

This land had a story, and it was a good one—it still is. But boy, it was a wild one, too. And that, folks, is the story of Ronler Acres. I hope you enjoyed it.

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