Seaside

Sister cities

• Walldorf
• Shakotan

History

Around on January 1, 1806, a group of men from the Lewis and Clark Expedition built a salt-making cairn at the site later developed as Seaside. The city was not incorporated until February 17, 1899, when coastal resort areas were being settled. It is about by car northwest of Portland, Oregon, a major population center. In 1912, Alexandre Gilbert (1843–1932) was elected Mayor of Seaside. Gilbert was a French immigrant, a veteran of the Franco Prussian War (1870–1871). After living in San Francisco, California and Astoria, Oregon, Gilbert moved to Seaside where he had a beach cottage (built in 1885). Gilbert was a real estate developer who donated land to the City of Seaside for its one-and-a-half-mile-long Promenade, or "Prom", along the Pacific beach. In 1892, he added to his beach cottage. Nearly 100 years later, what was known as the Gilbert House was operated commercially as the Gilbert Inn since the mid-1980s. Both it and the "Gilbert Block" office building he built on Broadway still survive. Gilbert died at home in Seaside and is interred in Ocean View Abbey Mausoleum in Warrenton.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. Seaside lies on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at the southern end of the Clatsop Plains, about south of where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific. The city is developed on both sides of the Necanicum River, which flows to the ocean at the city's northern edge. Tillamook Head towers over the southern edge of the city. The geography associated with the gradual slope of the broad sandy beaches of Clatsop Spit provide excellent conditions for the formation of beds of millions of Pacific razor clams annually. The razor clams attract thousands of visitors to Seaside Beach each year. Waves attract surfers all year round to the sandy shores. U.S. Route 101 passes through the city. Seaside has an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb), typical Pacific Northwest climate, bordering very closely on a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb). It receives rainy winters and mild-to-cool summers. Mean high temperature in the warmest month, August, is roughly . The warmest heat waves, however, occur in September. The hottest day on record was , which occurred on both September 23, 1943 and September 24, 1974. The coldest temperature ever recorded was which occurred on December 8, 1972. Part of Seaside is located in a tsunami inundation zone. Among other preparations, the City of Seaside has embarked on a program in which residents above the zone are asked to volunteer to store within their homes barrels of medical supplies, water purification systems, emergency rations, tarps, and radios, with each barrel having enough supplies to last 20 individuals for at least three days. As of January 2017, there are 119 barrels within volunteer households and a waiting list of…

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  9,107
• Western Gull

  Larus occidentalis Audubon, 1839 · Aves
  8,643
• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  5,411
• White-crowned Sparrow

  Zonotrichia leucophrys (J.R.Forster, 1772) · Aves
  4,968
• Brown Pelican

  Pelecanus occidentalis Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  4,793
• Common Murre

  Uria aalge (Pontoppidan, 1763) · Aves
  4,448
• Pelagic Cormorant

  Phalacrocorax pelagicus Pallas, 1811 · Aves
  4,219
• Barn Swallow

  Hirundo rustica Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,200

Most recent

• M 2.65 — 2025-12-19
  5 km WSW of Pe Ell, Washington
• M 3.09 — 2023-11-24
  4 km WSW of Deer Island, Oregon
• M 2.68 — 2023-07-02
  11 km W of Deer Island, Oregon
• M 2.84 — 2022-07-24
  6 km SW of Aloha, Oregon
• M 2.54 — 2021-11-27
  11 km WNW of Beaver, Oregon
• M 2.56 — 2018-09-25
  8 km S of Scappoose, Oregon