Hillsboro, Oregon, United States

🇺🇸 Hillsboro is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many high-technology companies, such as Intel, that compose what has become known as the Silicon Forest.

For thousands of years the Atfalati tribe of the Kalapuya lived in the Tualatin Valley near the later site of Hillsboro. The climate, moderated by the Pacific Ocean, helped make the region suitable for fishing, hunting, food gathering, and agriculture. Settlers founded a community here in 1842, later named after David Hill, an Oregon politician. Transportation by riverboat on the Tualatin River was part of Hillsboro's settler economy. A railroad reached the area in the early 1870s and an interurban electric railway about four decades later. These railways, as well as highways, aided the slow growth of the city to about 2,000 people by 1910 and about 5,000 by 1950, before the arrival of high-tech companies in the 1980s.

Hillsboro has a council–manager government consisting of a city manager and a city council headed by a mayor. In addition to high-tech industry, sectors important to Hillsboro's economy are health care, retail sales, and agriculture, including grapes and wineries. The city operates more than twenty parks and the mixed-use Hillsboro Stadium, and ten sites in the city are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Modes of transportation include private vehicles, public buses and light rail, and aircraft using the Hillsboro Airport. The city is home to Pacific University's Health Professions Campus. Notable residents include two Oregon governors.

Economy Manufacturing is the leading employment sector in Hillsboro, employing 24% of the workforce, followed by health care, education, and social services with a total of 15%. One example of a manufacturer headquartered in Hillsboro is Beaverton Foods, a family owned condiment manufacturer since 1929, with 70+ employees and $25 million in annual sales; it moved to its current headquarters in 2001. Retail employment constitutes 12%, construction makes up 7%, and 13% of workers are employed in the administrative, scientific, professional, or waste management industries. 68% of workers commute alone to the workplace, and 8% use public transportation. The average one-way commute time is about 24 minutes.

Many technology companies operate in Hillsboro, making it the centre of Oregon's Silicon Forest. In particular, Intel's largest site is in Hillsboro, and includes three large campuses: Ronler Acres, Jones Farm, and Hawthorn Farm, along with several smaller campuses that employ about 16,000 workers. Other high-tech companies operating facilities in Hillsboro include Synopsys, Epson, Salesforce, and Oracle's (formerly Sun Microsystems) High-End Operations. Hillsboro is the corporate headquarters for RadiSys and Planar Systems among others.

In 2006, Genentech announced plans to locate a packaging and distribution facility on 100 acres (0.40 km²) in Hillsboro. The $400 million facility opened in 2010, which Oregon officials hoped would eventually also be used for research and development for the biotechnology company. Other biotech or medical companies based in Hillsboro include FEI Company and Acumed.

The city is also a landing point on three fiber optic cable systems linking the United States across the Pacific Ocean: C2C, Southern Cross Cable, and VSNL Transpacific. These cable landings, lower energy costs, and tax breaks led to a boom of data centres being built starting about 2010. Data centres include those for Adobe, NetApp, Umpqua Bank, OHSU, and Fortune Data Centers.

Hillsboro serves as the corporate headquarters for Rodgers Instruments, Soloflex, Norm Thompson Outfitters, and Parr Lumber, among others. Fujitsu and NEC Corporation formerly had factories in Hillsboro. Hillsboro is also home to the Laika stop-motion animation studio, creator of the Oscar-nominated feature films Coraline (2009) and Paranorman (2012). In addition, Erickson Aero Tanker, an aviation company which operates McDonnell Douglas MD-87 jetliners converted for use as aerial firefighting air tankers, is based in Hillsboro.

The Hatfield Government Center in Hillsboro is the western terminus of the MAX Blue Line, part of the Portland metropolitan area's light-rail system. The presence of MAX prompted the development of the pedestrian-oriented community of Orenco Station within Hillsboro. Orenco Station was called the Best Planned Community of 1999 by the National Association of Home Builders. It was also named "Best new burb" by Sunset magazine in 2006. Hillsboro overall was listed on CNN Money Magazine's list of best places to live in 2010 for cities with populations between 50,000 and 300,000 residents. The city came in at 92, the highest ranking for any city in the state.

Hillsboro's primary commercial cores are concentrated along Tualatin Valley Highway and Cornell Road. Additionally, the Tanasbourne neighbourhood is a regional shopping area on the eastern edge of the city. The neighborhood is home to the lifestyle shopping centre The Streets of Tanasbourne. The $55 million outdoor complex with 368,000 square feet (34,200 m²) of retail space opened in 2004 with Meier & Frank (later Macy's) as the anchor tenant.

The other large shopping centre in the city is The Sunset Esplanade, located along Tualatin Valley Highway. In November 2005, the world's largest Costco, a warehouse club store, opened in Hillsboro. The store, with 205,000 square feet (19,000 m²) of floor space, is about 60,000 square feet (5,600 m²) bigger than the average Costco.

Wineries near the city include Oak Knoll Winery, established in 1970, the oldest and largest winery in Washington County. Helvetia Winery & Vineyards to the north of Hillsboro started in the 1980s. Wineries to the south include Gypsy Dancer Estates Winery and Raptor Ridge. Local wines include pinot noir, pinot gris, and chardonnay.

Largest employers 1. Intel; 2. Kaiser Permanente; 3. Hillsboro School District; 4. Washington County; 5. Nike; 6. Wells Fargo Bank; 7. Tuality HealthCare; 8. Qorvo; 9. City of Hillsboro; 10. RadiSys.