Qualla: Seaside, Oregon

Seaside, Oregon: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen, CC0. Five men from the Lewis and Clark Expedition spent nearly two months here in early 1806, tending fires under iron kettles to boil the Pacific into salt. They needed 28 gallons of it to preserve meat for the long journey home. Two centuries later, the city of Seaside still celebrates that desperate labor every September at the Salt Maker's Return festival, re-enacting the tedious, essential work that once kept an expedition alive. The salt cairn is gone, but the ocean that supplied it has never stopped shaping this town.

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Image: Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen | CC0

Seaside, Oregon: A Frenchman's Gift to the Shore

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HoneyKnut, CC BY-SA 4.0. Alexandre Gilbert arrived in Seaside by way of the Franco-Prussian War, San Francisco, and Astoria. Born in 1843, he had fought in the conflict that reshaped Europe before crossing an ocean and most of a continent to build a beach cottage on the Oregon coast in 1885. By 1912, Gil...

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Image: HoneyKnut | CC BY-SA 4.0

Seaside, Oregon: Between River and Rock

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0. Seaside sits at the southern end of the Clatsop Plains, built on both sides of the Necanicum River where it empties into the Pacific. To the south, Tillamook Head rises 1,200 feet in a wall of forested basalt, marking the boundary between the town's broad beaches and the rugged h...

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Image: Martin Kraft | CC BY-SA 3.0

Seaside, Oregon: The Barrels in the Hillside

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen, CC0. Seismologists estimate a one-in-three chance that a major earthquake and tsunami will strike Seaside within the next fifty years. The city has not waited for certainty. Residents living above the tsunami inundation zone volunteer to store emergency barrels in their homes -- each ...

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Image: Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen | CC0

Seaside, Oregon: Sand Courts and Fireworks

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jerry Gunner from Lincoln, UK, CC BY 2.0. For a town of just over 7,000 people, Seaside punches above its weight in spectacle. Its Fourth of July fireworks display is one of the largest on the West Coast. Every August, the Seaside Beach Volleyball tournament -- the second largest in the world -- transforms the waterfront...

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Image: Jerry Gunner from Lincoln, UK | CC BY 2.0

Seaside, Oregon: Eighty Miles from Portland

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M.O. Stevens, Public domain. Seaside owes its existence to accessibility. Railroad magnate Ben Holladay built Seaside House in the 1870s as a summer resort, and the town that grew around it was incorporated in 1899. Today, U.S. Route 26 delivers Portland's population 79 miles to the coast in under two hours,...

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Image: M.O. Stevens | Public domain