Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Moclips, WA

Moclips is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Grays Harbor County, Washington, on the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Moclips River.

The 2020 census counted 211 people in Moclips, nearly unchanged from 207 in 2010; its 2000 count of 615 covered a larger area that then included Pacific Beach, which became a separate CDP before 2010.

The name comes from a Quinault word: Edmond S. Meany interpreted it as a place where girls were sent as they approached puberty, while William Bright gives its meaning simply as 'large stream.'

Homesteaders such as Steve Grover settled the area as early as 1862, but the town dates to 1905, when the Northern Pacific Railway reached Moclips as its westernmost coastal terminus and Dr. Edward Lycan built the first Moclips Beach Hotel.

That first hotel, a two-story, 150-room resort, burned down within months in 1905; Lycan's replacement, completed in 1907, was three stories and a block long, with 270 rooms and 2,000 feet of covered veranda, and the ocean was reported to be just 12 feet from the hotel grounds.

In its resort heyday Moclips had restaurants, a theater, canneries, and the M. R. Smith Lumber and Shingle Mill and was promoted as a health resort; a series of storms in 1911 washed away much of the town and ruined the great hotel, and a 1948 welding-accident fire destroyed many hilltop homes and businesses.

The CDP includes the residential area of Sunset Beach, is bordered to the south by Pacific Beach and to the north by the Quinault Indian Reservation, and lies about five miles south of Point Grenville.

Moclips is home to the Museum of the North Beach, which preserves the history of the coast's resort era.