24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Albany, OR

Albany is a city in and the county seat of Linn County, Oregon, and the 11th most populous city in the state, incorporated as a city in 1864.

The 2020 census counted 56,472 residents in Albany, which sits in the Willamette Valley at the confluence of the Calapooia River and the Willamette River.

Albany spans two counties, Linn and Benton: most of the city falls within Linn County, while a smaller portion rests north of downtown on the west bank of the Willamette River in Benton County, though the dataset record lists Linn County only.

The Kalapuya people named the area Takenah, a word describing the deep pool at the confluence of the Calapooia and Willamette rivers, and in 1848 brothers Walter and Thomas Monteith bought a 320-acre claim from Hiram Smead for 400 dollars and a horse and named the town Albany after their hometown of Albany, New York.

Abner Hackleman arrived as the first European American settler in 1845, Albany's first school was established in 1851 with Eleanor B. Hackleman as its first teacher, and the first steamboat, the Multnomah, arrived in 1852.

Albany was designated the county seat in 1851, replacing Calapooia, and its first courthouse was built in 1852 on 10 acres donated by the Monteiths to ensure Albany would remain the county seat.

Albany carries the nicknames Hub of the Valley, Grass Seed Capital, and Rare Metals Capital.

The first train reached Albany in 1871, after local businessmen raised 50,000 dollars to make sure the rails ran through the city, and the world's longest wooden railroad drawbridge was built in 1888 for the Albany-Corvallis run, with 28 passenger trains departing daily by 1910.

Starting in the 1940s, Albany hosted the Albany World Championship Timber Carnival over the Fourth of July weekend, drawing competitors from around the world for logging skills contests, until it was cancelled in 2001.

Albany's rare metals industry grew from the Wah Chang trading company founded in 1916 by Chinese-American engineer Kuo-Ching Li and from the Albany Research Center established in 1942, where the first zirconium strip was rolled in August 1946 under metallurgist William Justin Kroll.