Westport is named after "Captain" John West, a millwright and lumberman who settled in the area in the early 1850s. West was a native of Scotland, emigrated to Canada as a young man where he worked in a sawmill on the St. Lawrence River and then came to Oregon via California during the gold rush of 1849. West ran a sawmill and a salmon cannery in the community. The Westport post office was established in 1863 with West was its first postmaster.