24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Gaston, OR

Gaston is an incorporated city in Washington County, Oregon, located between Forest Grove to the north and Yamhill to the south, straddling Oregon Route 47 and bordering the Tualatin River.

Gaston was formally incorporated in 1914 and had a population of 676 at the 2020 census, up from 637 in 2010.

The 2020 census counted 253 households in Gaston, with a median age of 38.4 years, and every resident was counted as living in a rural area.

Gaston is named after railroad executive Joseph Gaston.

The first known inhabitants of the Tualatin Valley were the Atfalati tribe, a subset of the Kalapuya people, and in 1851 surviving members negotiated a treaty ceding their ancestral lands throughout the valley to guarantee a small reservation on the banks of nearby Wapato Lake, but the treaty was never ratified and in the late 1850s the tribe was relocated to the Grand Ronde Reservation.

Large-scale American settlement began in the 1850s under the Donation Land Claim Act, and in the 1870s the West Side Railroad was built from Hillsboro to Corvallis, cutting through the region.

The community of Gaston developed from a railroad stop in 1872 into a commercial center hosting a school, a post office, a hotel, and a blacksmith shop.

Joseph Gaston left his position at the railroad after legal disputes, moved to the region in 1880, and spent the next sixteen years attempting to drain Wapato Lake for farmland.

The nearby community of Cherry Grove was founded in 1911 as a logging hub and briefly eclipsed Gaston.

In 1915 a new high school was built on land Joseph Gaston had set aside for a school, and after that building was condemned following the 1986-87 school year, residents chose to build a new high school rather than merge with a nearby district, so Gaston kept its independent school system.