Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Coquille, OR

Coquille is an incorporated city and the county seat of Coos County, Oregon, and its population was 4,015 at the 2020 census.

The 2020 census counted 1,681 households and 1,871 housing units in Coquille, and the median age of its residents was 44.2 years.

Coquille is named for the Coquille Native American tribe, whose Upper Coquille villages once stood along the river that shares the city's name.

American settlement of the townsite began after the conflicts of the 1850s, with a post office opening in 1870, and the town of Coquille was formally incorporated in 1885.

The first sawmill was built on the town's waterfront in 1880 by Bunch, Bennett & Company, and before roads reached the area, steam-powered sternwheelers carried passengers and freight between Coquille, Myrtle Point, and Bandon.

A twenty-year struggle with the Coos Bay area over the county seat ended in 1896 when the seat was moved from Empire City to Coquille, which was then the only city in the county connected by roads, railroad, and water.

The Coos Bay Roseburg & Eastern Railroad & Navigation Company completed a rail line from Marshfield, now Coos Bay, to Myrtle Point in 1893, connecting the Coquille Valley to a deepwater seaport for the first time.

The timber industry is Coquille's primary economic base, and the 1920s were the town's boom years, with population climbing from 1,642 in 1920 to 2,732 in 1930, about 10 percent of the entire county's population at the time.

Coquille continued to thrive on wood products even after the Oregon Coast Highway bypassed the city in 1960, and its economy faltered only in the 1980s with reductions in timber harvesting and the closure of a Georgia-Pacific mill.

The city is bordered by the Coquille River, which drains part of the Coast Range into the Pacific Ocean at Bandon, and the Coos County Courthouse and the volunteer-run Sawdust Theatre anchor downtown Coquille.