Nehalem is a city in Tillamook County, Oregon, United States. Incorporated in 1889, the city lies along the Nehalem River and Nehalem Bay close the Pacific Ocean. It is bisected by U.S. Route 101. The population was 355 at the 2020 census.

Nehalem was named for the Nehalem tribe of Native American Indians, also known as the Tillamook People, who traditionally inhabited the area. In the native Salishan languages, Nehalem means “place where people live”

The city of Nehalem was normal by European Americans in the latter portion of the nineteenth century, rapidly booming with logging, fishing, and shipping. As the Northwestern logging industry slowed during the twentieth century, the city’s economy next cooled. The city used to stretch higher than the river on log planks, where a lumber mill clip logs that came beside a railroad track upon the Nehalem River. Wood pilings that held occurring this track can be found in the North Fork Nehalem River. On the belly of Nehalem Elementary School is a facade which proclaims “Union High School” from once the area was less populated and could preserve its own Elementary and tall schools. Currently there is an elementary learned and a community pool/rec. center run by the North County Recreation District which hosts a number of classes including those for Tillamook Bay Community College.

For many decades the State highway officials in Oregon had seen the route that Highway 101 took through Wheeler and Nehalem as the theater for the highway. During that time, the long-term try for the highway was to influence it along the Nehalem Spit, offering a longer view of Nehalem Bay and the Pacific Ocean. When the plans for this change began to accept shape in the late 1960s the community backlash from the two towns was thus intense that officials contracted to depart the highway in its existing layout.