Tillamook

History

The city is named for the Tillamook people, a Native American tribe speaking a Salishan language who lived in this area until the early 19th century. Anthropologist Franz Boas identifies the Tillamook Native Americans as the southernmost branch of the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest. This group was separated geographically from the northern branch by tribes of Chinookan peoples who occupied territory between them. The name Tillamook, he says, is of Chinook origin, and refers to the people of a locality known as Elim or Kelim. They spoke Tillamook, a combination of two dialects. Tillamook culture differed from that of the northern Coast Salish, Boas says, and might have been influenced by tribal cultures to the south, in what is now Northern California. Captain Robert Gray first anchored in Tillamook Bay in 1788, marking the first recorded European landing on the Oregon coast. 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. Tillamook was officially incorporated as a city in 1891. Its first mayor was George Cohn, a merchant and community leader who served in 1891. Cohn was the president of Cohn and Company, a local mercantile. The first church in Tillamook was the Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1861 by early settlers. Services were initially held in homes and schoolhouses, with the first dedicated building constructed in the 1870s. The Sacred Heart Catholic Church followed in 1896. A series of devastating forest fires, Tillamook Burn starting with the 1933 fire that burned 240,000 acres in 6 days, destroying $442 million in timber…

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land. The Tillamook area is also home to five rivers, the Tillamook, Trask, Wilson, Kilchis, and the Miami just north of the city. Tillamook has a cool-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb), although much wetter than usual for this climate type. The city has a mild and wet climate with very little seasonal temperature variation due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. From November through April, daytime high temperatures range from the high 40s to the high 50s with abundant rainfall – including more than per month in November, December, and January. Frosts are not rare in winter, with 47 mornings falling below freezing on average each year, but snowfall is very rare – the mean from 1991 to 2020 was only and the median zero – but winter floods are a common occurrence. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Tillamook was on January 31, 1950 during a famous cold wave, and the lowest maximum on February 3, 1989. Between April and October, the precipitation in Tillamook is comparatively lighter than other coastal cities, but still remains much wetter than the population centers in the Willamette Valley. Tillamook's annual precipitation averages about compared to only in Portland. The wettest "rain year" has been from July 2016 to June 2017 with and the driest from July 1976 to June 1977 with . The most rainfall in one month has been in December 2015, and the most in 24 hours on October 20, 2019. Summers in Tillamook are brief and mild with average daytime temperatures in the upper 60s, although daytime temperatures can occasionally soar into the 80s and 90s for days at a time: the record hottest temperature being on September 14, 1979. Summer is by far the driest…

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Tillamook High School
  High · Tillamook · 723 students · 18.1:1 ratio
• East Elementary School
  Middle · Tillamook · 470 students · 15.2:1 ratio
• Tillamook Junior High School
  Middle · Tillamook · 344 students · 19.1:1 ratio
• Liberty Elementary School
  Elementary · Tillamook · 276 students · 12:1 ratio
• South Prairie Elementary School
  Elementary · Tillamook · 276 students · 15.3:1 ratio
• Garibaldi Elementary School
  Elementary · Garibaldi · 120 students · 13.3:1 ratio
• Trask River High School
  High · Tillamook · 21 students · 4.2:1 ratio