Tillamook

Tillamook: Cape Meares Lighthouse

Tillamook, city, seat (1873) of Tillamook county, northwestern Oregon, U.S., on the Trask River, at the head of Tillamook Bay, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. Founded in 1851, the settlement was known successively as Lincoln and Hoquarton before being named in 1885 for the local Tillamook Indians. The city serves an agricultural, lumbering, and dairying area and is renowned for specialty cheddar cheeses. It is home to the Tillamook campus of Tillamook Bay Community College (1956) and the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum (1932). Munson Creek Falls and Cape Meares Lighthouse are nearby, as is the Tillamook Air Museum, which is lodged in one of two hangars built at Naval Air Station Tillamook (decommissioned 1948) to house K-class blimps (the second hangar was destroyed by fire in 1992). The eight blimps once housed there were used to patrol the coast and to escort convoys. A private collection of aircraft is now on display in the remaining hangar. Inc. 1891. Pop. (2000) 4,352; (2010) 4,935.