Tillamook Headlight (Tillamook, Oregon) 1888-1934 (2024)

FAQs

What is the history of Tillamook Oregon? ›

Settlers began arriving in the early 1850s, and Tillamook County was created by the Territorial legislature in 1853. In 1862, the town itself was laid out, and the first post office was opened in 1866. The town was voted to be the county seat in 1873, and Tillamook was officially incorporated as a city in 1891.

Tillamook Bay is on the Oregon coast, 50 miles south of the Columbia River. The Army Corps of Engineers owns and maintains two jetties at Tillamook Bay's entrance. The north jetty was constructed first in 1914 with south jetty construction beginning decades later in 1969.

Tillamook County, Oregon has 1,103.2 square miles of land area and is the 26th largest county in Oregon by total area.

Tillamook County is a county in Oregon. The county population is 27,390, according to the United States Census Bureau. The county seat is Tillamook.

Following the Anglo American Treaty of 1818, the region was "jointly occupied" by the U.S. and Britain. The Americans referred to the region as Oregon Country, while the British knew it as the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia District, which was administered from Fort Vancouver near present-day Vancouver, Washington.

Port Orford claims to be the oldest town site on the Oregon coast, dating to 1851. The Qua-toh-mah band of Athabascan-speaking Tututni people were the original inhabitants of the area.

For twelve thousand years or more, Tillamook people lived at the tidewaters of the Nehalem, Tillamook, Netarts, and Nestucca Bays and at the mouths of the present-day Miami, Kilchis, Wilson, Trask, Tillamook, Salmon, and Siletz Rivers, where they favored sites with good visibility, drainage, fresh water, and firewood.

Tillamook, which has been around for more than 100 years, is owned by approximately 110 dairy farming families, many of whom are third generation co-op members.

Wilson River Near Tillamook, OR - USGS Water Data for the Nation.

The Tillamook are a Native American tribe from coastal Oregon of the Salish linguistic group. The name "Tillamook" is a Chinook language term meaning "people of [the village] Nekelim (or Nehalem)", sometimes it is given as a Coast Salish term, meaning "Land of Many Waters".

What type of money did the Tillamook tribe use? ›

One village could have many chiefs. Before the white man, the natives had a simple monetary system of small white Dentalium shells that were strung together. After contact with white traders, the natives added animal hides as another currency.

Tillamook is an extinct Salishan language, formerly spoken by the Tillamook people in northwestern Oregon, United States. The last fluent speaker was Minnie Scovell who died in 1972.

The name “Tillamook'' is Chinook in origin and means “the people of Nekelim (Nehalem).” Lewis and Clark estimated the Tillamook population to be around 2200 in 1805-1806. A later Hudson Bay estimate put their numbers at 1500. Epidemic diseases dramatically reduced the population to about 200 by 1849.

Today, the Tillamook people are represented by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians with one or two families married into the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Descendants of the Nehalem and Clatsop peoples have formed the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes, but have not yet been granted federal recognition.

Seaburg and Miller report that “epidemics of malaria and other diseases” killed many Tillamook people during the 1830s, and some Tillamooks were removed to the Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations in the 1850s. Reportedly, only twenty-two lived in Tillamook County by 1930.

Founded in 1811, Astoria is the oldest city in the state and was the first permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. The county is the northwest corner of Oregon, and Astoria is located on the south shore of the Columbia River, where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean.