Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Gearhart, OR

Gearhart is a city in Clatsop County, Oregon, on the Pacific coast just north of Seaside, with ZIP code 97138.

The 2020 census counted 1,793 people in Gearhart, living in 767 households, with a median age of 53.4 years, and 31.1 percent of residents were 65 years of age or older.

Gearhart was incorporated in 1918.

The city is named for Phillip Gearhart, a settler who set out from Independence, Missouri, in 1848 with his family and arrived in Oregon City in October of that year, and who in 1851 bought a squatter's right in the south Clatsop Plains for 1,000 dollars and created a 640-acre donation land claim.

Gearhart increased his holdings by 537 acres in 1859 and 571 acres in 1863, and the entire parcel encompassed all of what is now called Gearhart as well as a portion of Seaside across the Necanicum River estuary.

In 1889 a railroad was built between Astoria and Seaside, and Gearhart began to draw attention as a pleasant landscape for wandering and picnicking, with early settlers attracted to the Ridge Path through the dune meadows of the Phillip Gearhart land claim.

Gearhart lies on flat land along the coast at an elevation of only 10 feet, and the Oregon geology department determined that the city lacks viable options for high ground, leaving it vulnerable to tsunamis.

Of Gearhart's 1,513 housing units in the 2020 census, 49.3 percent were vacant, reflecting the city's many seasonal and vacation homes, and 80.6 percent of occupied housing units were owner-occupied.

Gearhart is in the Seaside School District 10, whose comprehensive high school is Seaside High School, and Clatsop County is in the boundary of Clatsop Community College.

Notable people from Gearhart include Charles Royer, a journalist and former Mayor of Seattle.