SEPT. 1, 1962, WAS an unusually sultry day for the north Oregon coast, and the little beachside resort town of Seaside was crammed with high-school and college kids.

They had come from all over the state and beyond for a rowdy, high-spirited end-of-summer Labor Day beach-party weekend that had become almost like a tradition in the postwar years.

Something was a little different this year, though. The crowd was larger than usual, for one thing. Actually, it was a lot larger. The first baby-boomers, born in 1946, were 16 years old in 1962 ... and there were a lot of them on the beach that day, and they were a bit wild.

Something else that was different that year was the attitude of the Seaside cops. They were being noticeably more hard-nosed than they had been in years past. Seaside had elected a new mayor, Maurice Pysher, a 68-year-old former heating engineer who had retired to Seaside from Portland a couple years before.

Pysher didn’t like his new town’s reputation as a place where kids could blow off steam, and he’d seen that they were getting noticeably rowdier year after year. He wanted visitors to Seaside to be quieter, more respectful, and less rambunctious. So he had fired Seaside’s longtime police chief and replaced him with someone who would be more strict and firm about keeping things orderly.

The crowds of college kids and high-school students who flocked to town for Labor Day had always been a little high-spirited, and the town’s cops had learned to strike a balance with them. They’d be there if somebody really needed help, and they’d stop any actual vandalism or other criminal activity; but they wouldn’t accost anyone on the street and hassle them for carrying an open beer, or ticket them for disorderly conduct for getting too loud around a beach bonfire.

But, not any more. Today was the start of Labor Day Weekend, 1962. The crowds were enormous, the beer was flowing freely, and the cops had a new attitude.

It wouldn’t take long for that combination to explode into something close to a worst-case scenario for the town: the first  Seaside beach-party riot. (Seaside, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412b.seaside-riots-gidget-goes-berzerk-679.510.html)