Seaside's Rock 'n Roll Riots 1962-1964

Seaside, Oregon mirrored every American small-town in the 1950s and 1960s: fiercely patriotic, independent yet community minded. Its uniqueness came with its location, far from the city but near, perched at the edge of the continental United States, only 90 minutes by car from the Willamette Valley and three hours from Seattle.

As its Native American population dwindled, Seaside's 19th century settlers were explorers, farmers, visionaries and dreamers, from the locomotive king Ben Holladay Seaside downtown developer Alexandre Gilbert. Oregon's public beaches, guaranteed by Governor Oswald West in 1912, assured that the four miles of waterfront would accessible to everyone.

Along with the visitors came the entrepreneurs, shop owners and professionals needed to make the city thrive. Loggers made a good wage harvesting the abundant timber that covered the nearby hills. Cranberry farmers, orchards, dairies, horse ranches and even mink farms brought many more.

In the late '50s, the term generation gap was just around the corner. American youth, provided what appeared to be unlimited opportunity and wealth, defying their parents, rebels without a cause, wild ones. Hollywood filmmakers inspired fear, featuring biker gangs invading small towns. Rock 'n' roll was their anthem, music that no one over 30 could understand. The kids loved their music loud and they loved that their parents hated it.

"What's the matter with kids today?" the fictional character famously sang in 1958's Broadway hit "Bye Bye Birdie."

Seaside parents wondered that themselves as they watched their resort community transformed in those years by a steady stream of young people packing into hotel rooms, pitching tents on the beach, or hitching rides back to wherever.

Over Labor Day weekends in 1962, 1963, and 1964, those kids asserted themselves in a way they hadn't before. They gathered en masse on downtown Seaside's main street of Broadway, partying, fighting, drinking and dancing. Their presence drew law enforcement, arrests, injuries and international headlines. A worried nation asked, "Where are we headed?"

Seaside found itself on the map in a way it never intended.

I moved to Seaside in 2015 and even now, in 2024, have found that people are still assessing the effects of those three tumultuous years.

Seaside's Rock 'n' Roll Riots 1962-1964 examines the events leading up to the riots and how the city responded to three years of violent clashes that changed the course of the city forever.