Warrenton sits at the northwestern tip of Oregon, with the Columbia River on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other.
The name on the Highway 101 sign belongs to one man. The town itself is older than that name, and it wore a few others first.
Clatsop Land First
This stretch of the Columbia River mouth was Clatsop homeland long before any town plat. Clatsop communities lived along the south shore of the Columbia, from the river to Tillamook Head.
Clatsop County still carries their name. So does Fort Clatsop, just outside today’s Warrenton city limits, where the Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1805–1806.
Before Warrenton, It Was Lexington — Then Skipanon
The first settlement inside what is now Warrenton was Lexington, laid out in 1848. It became the first county seat of Clatsop County.
That did not last. In October 1851, the county court met in Lexington for the last time, and the county seat moved to Astoria. A Lexington post office operated intermittently between 1850 and 1857. After that, the name faded.
The same ground became known as Skipanon, after the river that still runs through town. A Skipanon post office operated from 1871 to 1903. The river kept the name. The town did not.
D.K. Warren Built a Town on Reclaimed Land
Very little of the tidal flat was considered “improved” until the early 1870s, when Daniel Knight Warren bought land from some of the first settlers.
With a crew of Chinese laborers, Warren built an earthen dike about two and a half miles long. Completed in 1878, the dike reclaimed a large tract of marshland from the Columbia’s regular flooding and made farms, roads and a townsite possible.
The modern townsite was platted in 1889, and Warren continued laying out the community around 1891. The following year, he built Warrenton’s first schoolhouse for $1,100 and gave it to the school district. Warrenton incorporated in 1899 and was named for him.
A Town Made of Other Towns
Warrenton is not simply one old village that grew. It is Lexington, Skipanon, Flavel, Fort Stevens and Hammond folded into one city.
Construction began on Fort Stevens near the mouth of the Columbia in 1863. The Army left in 1947, but the old batteries remain inside Fort Stevens State Park. So does the wreck of the Peter Iredale, which ran aground on Clatsop Spit in 1906.
Hammond began as a Clatsop village called Ne-ahk-stow. It was later named for lumberman Andrew B. Hammond, who completed the Astoria and Columbia River Railroad. Hammond voted to disincorporate in 1991 and merged with Warrenton that December. It still has its own ZIP code: 97121.
Fun Fact: Oregon’s First Woman Mayor of the 20th Century
On December 18, 1912, Warrenton elected Clara Cynthia Munson mayor. She took office in January 1913, becoming the first woman in Oregon to be elected and serve as mayor.
Her election came only about a month after Oregon voters approved equal suffrage for women—and barely 13 years after Warrenton incorporated as a city.
The River Mouth Still Defines Warrenton
Stand on the Youngs Bay Bridge and you can see why this place kept getting renamed instead of abandoned. Warrenton occupies the working side of the Columbia’s mouth: commercial fishing downtown, charter boats in Hammond, Fort Stevens on the spit, and Astoria about five miles across the bay.
The water that once flooded Warren’s townsite still shapes daily life here. The Skipanon flows through the city toward Youngs Bay, marinas shelter working boats, and the Pacific and Columbia meet just beyond the jetty.
The Name Is Only the Latest Layer
The next time you see Warrenton on a Highway 101 sign, remember that D.K. Warren’s name is only the latest layer. Under it are Skipanon, Lexington, a Clatsop river mouth, and a dike that made a town possible on land the river used to claim.
Featured photo: “A sunset over the wreck of the Peter Iredale” by Rick Obst, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
