Cross Creek Campground
Seaside, Oregon
July 19, 2021
Tomorrow is my day to explore Seaside. My initial reaction to my time here is that I would describe Cannon Beach as “upscale,” and Seaside is “family oriented.” Think Rehoboth Beach with a bit of Myrtle Beach thrown in. In Seaside you can find the Safeway and McDonalds they won’t allow in Cannon Beach. Here you can walk a boardwalk and rent those mukti-person, four wheel cycles. Here you will see men walking along without their shirts; I suspect you would be drawn and quartered for doing so in Cannon Beach.
There is also an outlet strip mall here featuring Nike and one of only two outlet stores of Helly Hansen (the other being north of Seattle). Helly Hansen is an upscale producer of sportswear, mostly for skiing. See below.
As awesome as the weather is now, I gather winters here are gray and wet — with a few powerful storms thrown in. Between those and the tsunami risk, I wonder how this area compares to OBX in terms of insurance. While most of the houses I have seen in Seaside would meet my definition of “modest,” many in Cannon Beach would meet my definition of “must be nice.”
With that blithering blather, here’s what Wikipedia says:
Seaside is a city in Clatsop County, Oregon on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The name Seaside is derived from Seaside House, a historic summer resort built in the 1870s by railroad magnate Ben Holladay. The city's population was 6,457 at the 2010 census.
History
The Clatsop were a historic Native American tribe that had a village named Ne-co-tat (in their Chinook language) in this area. Indigenous peoples had long inhabited the coastal area.
In January 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 79 miles by car northwest of Portland, Oregon.
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 Gilbert's eponymous "Gilbert Block" office building on Broadway still survive.
Gilbert died at home in Seaside and is interred in Ocean View Abbey Mausoleum in Warrenton.
I sure hope this street name is pronounced the way it is spelled. If there were a corresponding street name in Cannon Beach, it would be Sommelier Avenue (and it would not be pronounced the way it is spelled 🤪.)
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.14 square miles (10.72 km2), of which 3.94 square miles (10.20 km2) is land and 0.20 square miles (0.52 km2) is water.
Seaside lies on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at the southern end of the Clatsop Plains, about 18 mi 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 from the challenging point break off the tip of Tillamook Head to the sandy shores at "the cove" parking lot at Ocean Vista Drive.
Climate
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 68 °F. The warmest heatwaves occur in September. The hottest day on record was 95 °F which occurred on both September 23, 1943 and September 24, 1974. The coldest temperature ever recorded was 5 °F which occurred on December 8, 1972.
Tsunami inundation zone
Part of Seaside is located in a tsunami inundation zone. Among other preparation, 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 3 days. As of January 2017, there are 119 barrels within volunteer households and a waiting list of interested households.
Seismologists estimate that there is a one in three chance that Seaside will be hit by an earthquake and tsunami within the next fifty years. On Tues. Nov. 8, 2016, Seaside citizens voted 65% to 35% to issue $99.7 million in bonds to move the remaining three schools out of the tsunami inundation zone.
Demographics
As of the census of 2010, there were 6,457 people, 2,969 households, and 1,565 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,638.8 inhabitants per square mile (632.7/km2). There were 4,638 housing units at an average density of 1,177.2 per square mile (454.5/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 88.1% White, 0.6% African American, 0.8% Native American, 1.4% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 5.8% from other races, and 3.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latinoof any race were 12.4% of the population.
There were 2,969 households, of which 24.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 35.4% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.8% had a male householder with no wife present, and 47.3% were non-families. 38.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.16 and the average family size was 2.83.
The median age in the city was 41.5 years. 20% of residents were under the age of 18; 9.3% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 24.7% were from 25 to 44; 28.6% were from 45 to 64; and 17.4% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.3% male and 51.7% female.
Notable people
Mark Wiebe (born 1956), golfer
Helly Hansen
Helly Hansen (HH) is a Norwegian manufacturer and retailer of clothing and sports equipment and a subsidiary of the Canadian retail chain Canadian Tire. Currently headquartered in Oslo, it was previously headquartered in Moss, Norway from its founding in 1877 until October 2009.
Helly
History
Helly Juell Hansen had been at sea since the age of 14 and in 1877, at the age of 35, he and his wife Maren Margarethe produced their first oilskin jackets, trousers, sou'westers and tarpaulins, made from coarse linen soaked in linseed oil. Over the first five years they sold around 10,000 pieces.
In 1878 the company won a diploma for excellence at the Paris Expo, and began exporting its products.
After Helly Juell Hansen's death in 1914, company leadership passed on to his son Leiv Helly-Hansen, an experienced merchant.
In the 1920s a new fabric, which Helly-Hansen called Linox, was developed. Over the next 30 years the name Linox would transfer to a PVC (polyvinyl chloride) application.
A change for the brand came in 1949 when Helox was developed. The sheet of translucent PVC plastic sewn into waterproof coats and hats became a popular item. About 30,000 Helox coats were produced each month. Plarex, a heavier-duty version of Helox, backed by fabric, was developed for workwear.
Fibrepile, which is an insulation layer for wearing under waterproofs, was developed for the outdoor and workwear markets. It was used by Swedish lumber, who discovered that it offered insulation against the cold, and ventilated well during hard, physical work in the forest.
The layering story was completed in the 1970s, with the development of LIFA. The polypropylene fibre used in LIFA kept the skin dry and warm by pushing moisture away from the body, making it the ideal base-layer fabric for outdoor and workwear use. It was the birth of the three-layer systems of dress with LIFA close to the body, Fibrepile as an insulation layer, and rainwear for protection.
During the 1970s the company developed survival suits for offshore oil workers in the North Sea. In 1980 the company's breathable, waterproof fabric system, called Helly Tech, was launched. Helly Tech garments use both hydrophilic and microporous technology. Hydrophilic garments have water-loving molecular chains which pass water vapor to the outside. Microporous garments have tiny pores that allow water vapor to pass out of the fabric without letting rain droplets in.
Helly Hansen clothing developed a following among urban youth in the late 1990s, particularly in North England and with the hip hop culture in the US. The brand developed a mass appeal and is now sold in sports shops, not only the hiking and specialized clothing shops of before.
In 2008 they launched Odin, a 3-Layer materialization system made for mountaineers. The Odin collection won the Red Dot Design Award the same year.
In 2012, Helly Hansen introduced their H2 Flow Technology with the H2 Flow Jacket. The H2 Flow Jacket allows the wearer to regulate their body temperature.