Brookings is a community at the mouth of the Chetco River, about 21 miles (34 km) north-northwest of Crescent City, California, and 26 miles (42 km) south-southeast of Gold Beach, Oregon. The town was named after John E. Brookings, president of the Brookings Lumber and Box Company, which founded it in 1908. The Chetco River flows from the Southern Oregon Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean, starting at 3,588 feet (1,094 m) on the eastern flank of Chetco Peak. It runs north around Vulcan Peak, then generally southwest for 56 miles (90 km), draining a watershed of 225,280 acres (91,168 ha). The mountainous terrain of the Chetco River watershed was created roughly 130 million years ago when the Klamath terrane collided with the North American Plate, forming the Klamath Mountains. This collision caused sedimentary rocks to subduct and large plutons to rise, solidifying as granite visible around Vulcan and Chetco peaks. The eroded watershed now exposes some of Oregon’s oldest rocks, including metasedimentary and sedimentary rocks, ophiolitic rocks, volcanic rocks, and intrusive plutonic rocks.

Archaeological evidence suggests humans first arrived in the Chetco River watershed 3,000 to 1,000 years ago; they were likely ancestors of the Chetco people. The name “Chetco” comes from an Athabascan word meaning “close to the mouth of the Chetco River”. The Chetco were hunter-gatherers who hunted deer and elk, gathered acorns and mussels, and fished. An ancient trail paralleling Oregon’s coast was probably a seasonal migration route for accessing food. In 1828 a group of 18 Euro-American men and nearly 300 horses, led by Jedediah Smith, followed this trail after being ordered out of Mexican Alta California, hoping to reach the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. They crossed the river and camped near a Chetco village of ten or 12 lodges, though all residents had fled. Smith noted that these people caught elk in pits dug ten to 12 feet deep, completely covered; some of his group fell into the pits with their horses and struggled to escape. At least nine villages existed along the river, but between 1853 and 1855 many Chetco were killed by settler militias and the military, and their villages were destroyed in skirmishes during the Rogue River Wars. Survivors were forcibly removed to the Siletz Reservation. In 1873 the US Coast Survey charted the river mouth and recorded one remaining village.

In 1906 the Brookings Lumber and Box Company hired William J. Ward, a civil-engineering and forestry graduate, to survey southern Oregon’s coast for timber. After surveying the Chetco and Pistol River areas for several years, he recommended extensive lumbering operations and securing a townsite at the Chetco River for a mill and shipping center. Brookings was founded in 1908 as a company town. John E. Brookings was president and chief executive, and his cousin, Robert S. Brookings, provided major financial support. Robert Brookings, who lived in the east, devoted much time to semi-diplomatic missions and support of the arts; he later founded the Brookings Institution. In 1942 the second world war came to Brookings when Mount Emily became the first site in the continental United States to be bombed from the air in wartime. A Japanese seaplane launched from a submarine dropped incendiary bombs. The same submarine had previously shelled Fort Stevens near Astoria. The pilot, Nobuo Fujita, dropped two bombs: one on Wheeler Ridge on Mount Emily (the other’s location is unknown). The Wheeler Ridge bomb started a small fire that US Forest Service rangers extinguished. Fujita flew a second bombing sortie three weeks later, using Cape Blanco Light as a beacon. After 90 minutes of flying east from Cape Blanco, he dropped his bombs and reported seeing flames, but the bombing and fire went unnoticed. Read more here and here. Explore more of the Chetco River and Brookings here: