Template:Wp-Brookings, Oregon-History

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Founding

In 1906, the Brookings Timber Company hired William James Ward, a graduate in civil engineering and forestry, to come to the southern Oregon Coast and survey its lumbering potential. After timber cruising the Chetco and Pistol River areas for several years, he recommended that the Brookings people begin extensive lumbering operations here and secure a townsite for a mill and shipping center.

While John E. Brookings was responsible for the founding of Brookings as a company town, it was his cousin, Robert S. Brookings, who was responsible for its actual design. The latter Brookings hired Bernard Maybeck, an architect based in San Francisco who was later involved in the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, to lay out the plat of the townsite.

World War II

On September 9, 1942, Mount Emily near Brookings became the only site in the mainland United States and the second in the continental territory after the bombing of Dutch Harbor to suffer aerial bombardment during World War II. A Japanese floatplane piloted by Nobuo Fujita was launched from submarine I-25. The plane was armed with two incendiary bombs on a mission intended to start massive fires in the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Recent

The current marketing "brand" for the community, through the Brookings-Harbor Chamber of Commerce, is "The Pulse of America's Wild Rivers Coast". America's Wild Rivers Coast is a regional marketing brand for Curry County, Oregon, and Del Norte County, California.

2011 Tsunami

The Port of Brookings Harbor was damaged by tidal surges from a tsunami on March 11, 2011. The largest surge was estimated to be nearly .^[1] Boats were damaged, sunk, set adrift, and swept out to sea after many docks were torn away and pilings broken. The tsunami was caused by the 9.0 M_W Tōhoku earthquake offshore of the east coast of Honshu Island, Japan. The damage was estimated at $25 million to $30 million.^[2]