Unlike neighboring Washington, the original inhabitants of present-day Oregon did not prosecute a whale hunt, and whales figure but little in the iconography of Oregon's Native peoples.

Of course, in the early 19th century present-day Washington State was officially part of the Oregon Territory; thus, for several decades the Ozette, Quileute, Hoh, Quinalt, and Makah homelands were officially located in the Oregon Territory; and thus, technically, for several decades there was Native whaling from "Oregon".

Yankee whalers from New England, hunting in off shore waters, occasionally sighted and may occasionally have visited the Oregon coast; but it was not until the early 20th century that actual whale hunting was conducted in Oregon, from shore-whaling stations employing modern industrialized Norwegian technology.

The story of whaling on the Northwest Coast is told by former KWM Research Associate Robert Lloyd Webb in his absorbing and meticulously researched book, On the Northwest.