Seaside House

This photograph, which dates to approximately 1875, features guests arriving at or departing from Seaside House in Seaside, Oregon. Transportation tycoon Benjamin Holladay constructed the Italian Villa in 1871. Wealthy from the sale of his stage coach line to Wells Fargo in 1866, Holladay moved his headquarters to Portland from San Francisco in 1868 and entered the railroad business. An extravagant spender, Holladay built the coastal resort to entertain influential guests, and soon the destination attracted prominent visitors from far and wide.

The first landowners in the area now known as Seaside were the Latties, a widow her two children, who purchased two donation land claims in 1852 and 1853 and constructed a boarding house. With gradual improvements and remarkable meals, the establishment’s reputation grew among those who enjoyed outdoor recreation such as hunting and clamming. Holladay purchased the property in 1871 and built a new, more glamorous facility.

While not the first hotel on the Oregon coast, Ben Holladay’s Seaside House significantly contributed to the notoriety of the coastal destination. The building was an imposing structure with well-appointed rooms. The beautifully landscaped grounds included a race track and stable. Guests were wealthy and chic, often arriving with trunks full of stylish clothing. Once established, advertisements in newspapers along the western seaboard boasted the resort as “the oldest fashionable summer resort” on the Oregon coast.

The earliest visitors traveled to the isolated location by steamboat, stage, and later, by train. Some traveled by sea from San Francisco. Others came from Portland on excursion boats along the Columbia River to a point on Young’s Bay, where they transferred to luxurious stages. By 1891 vacationers traveled the second leg of this trip by train on the Astoria & South Coast Railroad line.

The Seaside Hotel continued to operate for decades after Holladay’s financial decline during the mid-1870s. With the help of the post office on the premises, the resort’s name became synonymous with the name of the community that grew around it. Entrepreneur G.M. Grimes built the Grimes Hotel shortly after Holladay’s arrival, and together the enterprises established Seaside as an elite and fashionable summer resort.

Further Reading:
Miller, Emma Gene. Clatsop County, Oregon: A History. Portland, Oreg., 1958.

Written by Sara Paulson, © Oregon Historical Society, 2007.