Aberdeen (/ˈæbərdiːn/ AB-ər-deen) is a city in Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States.

Samuel Benn, a New York City native, established a homestead on the Chehalis River in 1859 and later platted a town at the site named Aberdeen.

According to accounts collected by historian Edmond S. Meany, the name has two possible origins: from the Ilwaco-based Aberdeen Packing Company, which opened a cannery on the homestead in 1873;[7] or from the Scottish city of Aberdeen, named by an early settler who had lived in Scotland.

Although it became the largest and best-known city in Grays Harbor, Aberdeen lagged behind nearby Hoquiam and Cosmopolis in its early years.

It was nicknamed "The Hellhole of the Pacific", as well as  "The Port of Missing Men" due to its high murder rate.

[11] Aberdeen was hit hard during the Great Depression, with the number of major local sawmills reduced from 37 to 9.

[12] [better source needed] Aberdeen is also the home port of the tall ship Lady Washington, a reproduction of a smaller vessel used by the explorer Captain Robert Gray, featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean film The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Aberdeen is at the eastern end of Grays Harbor, near the mouth of the Chehalis River and southwest of the Olympic Mountains.

Grays Harbor is notable as the northernmost ria on North America's Pacific Coast because it has remained free of glaciers throughout the Quaternary due to unfavorable topography and warm temperatures.

It is thought that, during glacial periods of the Quaternary, the Chehalis River was a major refugium for aquatic species, as was the west coast from the Olympic Peninsula southward for plants that later formed the northern part of the Pacific temperate rainforest in formerly glaciated areas.

Temperatures are generally very mild due to the proximity of the warm Pacific Ocean and the Kuroshio Current.

Of these, the violent crimes consisted of 0 murder, 21 forcible rapes, 14 robberies and 42 aggravated assaults, while 82 burglaries, 435 larceny-thefts, 64 motor vehicle thefts and 6 acts of arson defined the property offenses.

Aberdeen and the rest of Grays Harbor remain dependent on timber, fishing, and tourism industries and as a regional service center for much of the Olympic Peninsula.

[citation needed] On December 19, 2005, Weyerhaeuser made plans to close the Aberdeen large-log sawmill and the Cosmopolis pulp mill, and the closures took effect in early 2006.

[22] In 2007, Imperium Renewables of Seattle invested $40 million in the construction of the biodiesel plant at the Port of Grays Harbor.

[26] In September 2010, the Weyerhaeuser Cosmopolis Pulp Mill was purchased by the Beverly Hills-based Gores Group and restarted as Cosmo Specialty Fibers, Inc.

[28][29] The newer South Shore Mall had 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) and space for 80 retailers, including anchor tenants Sears and J.C. Penney following their relocation from downtown.

[29][30] It was renamed to the Shoppes at Riverside in 2016 and closed on February 13, 2021, following an engineering report that found the soil under the foundation had settled and would pose structural risks.

[32] In 2002, the Weatherwax building of Aberdeen High School, built in 1909, burned to the ground in an act of arson.

The city originally had a Carnegie library that was opened in 1908 and replaced in 1966 by the current building, which underwent extensive renovations in 2000.

The building and the museum's collections were destroyed in a major fire in June 2018, including an exhibit on Nirvana.