24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Port Orford, OR

Port Orford is an incorporated city in Curry County on the southern coast of Oregon, and it had a population of 1,146 at the 2020 census.

Port Orford was incorporated in 1911, and the 2020 census counted 605 households in the city, with a median age of 60.8 years.

Port Orford is the westernmost settlement in the state of Oregon and the westernmost incorporated place in the 48 contiguous states.

The city takes its name from Captain George Vancouver's original name for nearby Cape Blanco, which he named for George, Earl of Orford, whom he called a much-respected friend.

Before European settlers arrived, the Port Orford area was inhabited by the indigenous Tututni people, whose languages belonged to the Pacific Coast Athabaskan family.

Spanish explorer Bartolome Ferrelo mapped Cape Blanco in 1543, and Captain George Vancouver sighted land and named it Port Orford in 1792.

In June 1851 Captain William Tichenor, in command of the U.S.S. Seagull, pulled into Port Orford and left behind nine men, and Fort Orford, a U.S. Army fort, was established near the town on September 14, 1851 and lasted until August 22, 1856.

In October 1941, then-mayor Gilbert Gable, frustrated with the poor condition of the state roads around Port Orford, suggested that counties along the Oregon and California border secede and create the State of Jefferson, a movement that ended with U.S. involvement in World War II.

Port Orford lies on U.S. Route 101 between the Pacific Ocean and the Siskiyou National Forest, 28 miles north of Gold Beach and 27 miles south of Bandon, and Battle Rock, a low promontory, stands on its southern coast.

Port Orford has an oceanic climate with cool, very wet winters and mild, dry summers, averaging about 72.61 inches of precipitation a year, and it sits at the northern end of Oregon's banana belt, a region of relatively warm weather caused by the Brookings effect.