Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Drain, OR

Drain is a city in Douglas County, Oregon, and the 2020 census recorded its population as 1,172.

Drain is named after town founder and politician Charles J. Drain, who donated 60 acres of nearby land to the Oregon and California Railroad in 1871.

The railroad reached northern Douglas County in 1872, and in exchange it surveyed and platted a town, named it Drain, and made it a stop on the railroad.

The City of Drain was officially incorporated on March 11, 1887.

In 1876 a coach road was established between Drain and Scottsburg, and Drain was the starting point for the Drain-Coos Bay stage line, which ran to Scottsburg and then by river steamer to Gardiner and the beach on the south side of the mouth of the Umpqua River.

The Drain Normal School was founded in the community in 1883 by the Methodist Church, the state took it over in 1885 and named it the Central Oregon State Normal School, and it closed in June 1908.

Drain's first school district was organized in 1861, eleven years before the town was established, becoming Oregon School District No. 22, and the North Douglas School District No. 22 still serves the community today.

Drain is served by North Douglas Elementary School and North Douglas High School, and the elementary and middle school now occupy the site where the original Normal School was built.

Elk Creek flows through Drain on its way to meet the Umpqua River at Elkton, and Pass Creek meets Elk Creek at the city of Drain.

The Pass Creek covered bridge once carried stagecoaches and then motor vehicles over Pass Creek in Drain before it was moved a few hundred feet from its original location in 1987 and reassembled behind the Drain Civic Center, and the city closed the deteriorating bridge completely in 2014.