Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Aberdeen, WA

Aberdeen is a city in Grays Harbor County, Washington, the most populous city in the county and the region's economic center, nicknamed the Gateway to the Olympic Peninsula.

Samuel Benn established a homestead on the Chehalis River in 1859 and later platted the town; Aberdeen was founded in 1884 and incorporated on May 12, 1890.

Like its Scottish namesake, Washington's Aberdeen is a port settlement situated at the mouth of two rivers, the Chehalis and the Wishkah, at the eastern end of Grays Harbor.

A. J. West built Aberdeen's first sawmill in 1894, launching a timber boom that made the city one of the great lumber ports of the Pacific Coast.

By 1900 Aberdeen's many saloons, brothels, and gambling establishments had earned it the nicknames 'The Hellhole of the Pacific' and 'The Port of Missing Men,' and waterfront figure Billy Gohl was convicted of two murders amid rumors of many more.

The Great Depression reduced the number of major sawmills in Aberdeen from 37 to 9, and most of the remaining mills closed by the 1990s as the area's old-growth timber was exhausted.

The 2020 census counted 17,013 residents in 6,449 households in Aberdeen, well below the city's timber-boom peak of 21,723 residents in 1930.

Aberdeen is the hometown of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana; Kurt Cobain Memorial Park, established in 2011 near where Cobain lived, features a plaque quoting 'Come as You Are,' which is also the city's official motto.

Aberdeen is home to Grays Harbor College, a community college in south Aberdeen whose athletic teams are known as the Charlie Chokers.

Aberdeen students attend J. M. Weatherwax High School, commonly called Aberdeen High School, whose 1909 Weatherwax building was destroyed by arson in 2002 and replaced with a new building that opened in 2007, as well as Harbor High School, an alternative school.