Charleston () is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Coos County,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, United States. Charleston is the least populated (Pop. 795

017 017 may refer to: * DOL-017, GameCube console * '' Global Underground 017'', DJ mix album * Road FC 017, 2014 Mixed Martial Arts event * Swift 017.n, racing car * Tyrrell 017, Formula One racing car See also * 17 (disambiguation) Seventeen o ...

community in Oregon's Bay Area and is Home to a large commercial fishing fleet, it is adjacent to the ocean entrance to

Coos Bay Coos Bay (Hanis language, Coos language: Atsixiis or Hanisich) is an estuary where the Coos River enters the Pacific Ocean, the estuary is approximately 12 miles long and up to two miles wide. It is the largest estuary completely within Oregon sta ...

. Charleston is the site of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology and the

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and Admiralty law, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the armed forces of the United States. It is one of the country's eight Uniformed services ...

Charleston Lifeboat Station. Charleston was named for Charles Haskell, a

settler A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...

who filed a land claim along South Slough in 1853. South Slough is an arm of Coos Bay, which it enters near the bay's mouth on the Pacific Ocean. Oregon Route 540, which crosses the slough southwest of Barview, passes through Charleston and links it to three state parks further south along the coast: Sunset Bay, Shore Acres, and Cape Arago. Postal authorities established a post office in Charleston in 1924. The community's ZIP code is 97420.

Estuarine Research Reserve

The South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, a reserve along the Coos Bay

Estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime enviro ...

, was established in Charleston in 1974. It was the first of 28 such reserves in the United States and the only one in Oregon.

References

Unincorporated communities in Coos County, Oregon Unincorporated communities in Oregon Populated coastal places in Oregon {{USCG-stub