Reedsport, Oregon

Reedsport sits at the mouth of the Umpqua River, one of the most storied salmon streams on the Oregon coast. Homesteaders began settling the tidal flats here as early as eighteen fifty-two, but the town itself took shape as a railroad construction camp and was named for local settler Alfred Reed. The post office came in nineteen twelve and the town incorporated in nineteen nineteen, both following the Southern Pacific Railroad, whose construction crews had camped in the area while building the coast line south toward Coos Bay.

Salmon canneries along the lower Umpqua once processed large catches of Umpqua chinook. The collapse of the Oregon timber industry in the late twentieth century hit the town hard, as did the decline of commercial salmon runs. Today Reedsport is the gateway to Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, forty miles of wind-sculpted sand that draw hikers, off-road riders, and photographers from across the region.

Just east of town on Highway thirty-eight, the Dean Creek Wildlife Area covers about one thousand acres, and visitors can often see sixty to one hundred Roosevelt elk there year round. Winchester Bay, about three miles south of Reedsport, is another gateway to the dunes. After a flood in nineteen sixty-four, a dike was built to protect the town, and the closure of the International Paper plant in nearby Gardiner in nineteen ninety-nine ended one of its last ties to the timber industry.