Cremation Services

There is no hospital inside Beaverton city limits. Oregon licenses sixty hospitals statewide and five in Washington County, and none of them is here. Kaiser’s Beaverton medical office has urgent care but states plainly that emergency care is not available there, which is worth knowing before a night-time decision.

The hospital a Beaverton resident is most likely to die in is Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, 9205 SW Barnes Road, licensed for 523 beds and by far the largest in the county. Providence names Washington County as its primary service area. The alternatives are Kaiser Permanente Westside at 2875 NE Stucki Avenue in Hillsboro, which runs a round-the-clock emergency department, Legacy Meridian Park in Tualatin, and Hillsboro Medical Center.

Hospice is thin here too. One Medicare-certified agency has a Beaverton address, Gracious Care Hospice on SW Hall Boulevard. The agency most Washington County families are actually referred to is Care Partners, a non-profit operating since 1982 and originally chartered as Hospice and Palliative Care of Washington County, on 503-648-9565. Serenity and Northwest Hospice work from Tigard, and Primrose from Scholls Ferry Road. We collect from all of them, and from private homes and care facilities, at any hour.

Washington County, and the question is not a silly one, because the hospital’s own address says Portland. Providence St. Vincent is at 9205 SW Barnes Road, Portland, Oregon 97225, but Oregon lists it as a Washington County hospital.

So the place of death reads Portland while the record belongs to Washington County Vital Records in Hillsboro. Families see the word Portland, drive to Multnomah County on NE 19th Avenue, and come away with nothing. It is the most common wasted trip in this part of the metro.

We tell you which county you are dealing with before you have to work it out, and we order the certificates ourselves either way.

Washington County Vital Records is at 155 N First Avenue, Suite 170, inside the Charles D. Cameron Public Services Building in Hillsboro, on 503-846-3538, weekdays 8:30 to 4:30 with a few later openings each month. From Beaverton that is about twelve miles west.

Certified copies are $25.00 each, first copy and every additional copy alike, with no volume discount. In person you can pay by cash, check, money order or card; by mail it must be a check or money order.

Mark the deadline, because Oregon has one and it is short. The county can only issue for roughly five months after the death. After six months the record moves to Oregon Health Authority state vital records at 971-673-1190, where mail orders take three to five weeks. Order more copies than you think you need, early. We order them at $30 each and file the record for you.

The Beaverton Valley Times is still publishing, now under Carpenter Media Group, and takes obituaries on 503-620-7355 or obituaries@beavertonvalleytimes.com. They run in the paper, on the website and in a daily obituary email. Up to two photographs. No rate is published; a representative calls back with a figure based on length and photographs.

One thing worth knowing before you plan a visit. The Beaverton Valley Times has no office in Beaverton. Its address is on Main Street in Forest Grove, and the obituary number is the shared Carpenter classifieds desk that also handles the papers in Lake Oswego and Tigard. There is no counter to walk into.

The Oregonian remains the regional option and starts at $264 through its obituary desk, including a permanent online memorial page. A complete obituary on this site, with photographs, is included in our price at no charge.

The City of Beaverton owns no cemetery, so unlike Vancouver or Kirkland there is no published municipal rate to compare against. Everything here is private, and none of the three nearest grounds publishes cemetery prices, so you will be asking each one.

Crescent Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum, 9925 SW Greenburg Road in Tigard, on 503-639-5347, is the one we would look at first, and not on price. It is an independent non-profit, non-denominational, established in 1852, and it offers columbarium niches, urn gardens and a scatter garden. The office is open weekdays 8:30 to 3:30.

Valley Memorial Park at 3929 SE Tualatin Valley Highway in Hillsboro has a cremation garden with niches. It now trades as Altogether and is owned by Foundation Partners Group, so the local name no longer means a local company. Finley Sunset Hills at 6801 SW Sunset Highway offers cremation niches set among boulders in its Fountain of Remembrance, and is owned by Service Corporation International.

We do not sell cemetery property and take no commission on it, so you are free to arrange this directly with whichever cemetery you choose.

Several of these are real money and almost none of them arrive unprompted. We have put them in the order we would work through them ourselves.

Social Security pays a one-time $255 lump-sum death payment to a surviving spouse, or failing that to a child who is 17 or younger, 18 or 19 and still in school, or disabled before 21. It is not automatic. You have two years from the death to claim it and after that it is gone. Call 1-800-772-1213, weekdays 8:00 to 7:00, and ask to apply for the lump-sum death payment. Offices now require an appointment and the current list is at ssa.gov/locator.

If the person was a veteran, start here before anything else. Willamette National Cemetery, 11800 SE Mount Scott Boulevard in Portland, at 503-273-5250, is the VA national cemetery serving Washington County, with space for both casketed and cremated remains. The office is open weekdays 8:00 to 4:30, the grounds daily from 7:00. From Beaverton it is a cross-town drive rather than a local errand, so allow for it.

What the VA actually provides, in its own words: “a gravesite in any of our national cemeteries with available space, opening and closing of the grave, perpetual care, a Government headstone or marker, a burial flag, and a Presidential Memorial Certificate, at no cost to the family.” On cremation specifically, that cremated remains are inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” Spouses and dependent children are covered as well, at no cost, with the name inscribed on the veteran’s headstone rather than on one of their own, and remarriage after the veteran’s death does not end eligibility. Booking is centralized: the National Cemetery Scheduling Office on 1-800-535-1117, with discharge papers faxed to 866-900-6417 beforehand.

There is also a cash allowance, distinct from the cemetery. For a death not connected to service the VA pays $1,002 as a burial allowance and $1,002 as a plot allowance, current from October 1, 2025, on Form 21P-530EZ filed within two years of burial. Watch this one: the plot allowance disappears if you use a national cemetery, since the plot cost you nothing. It is one or the other. The VA line is 1-800-827-1000.

Washington County Veteran Services is at 5240 NE Elam Young Parkway, Suite 300, in Hillsboro, on 503-846-3060. They will prepare and file your VA claim free of charge and get it right, which matters more than most families realize, because a badly filed burial allowance claim is the usual reason one is refused. They are a claims office, not a fund, so they file rather than pay. The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs is on 1-800-692-9666.

Where the person was an enrolled tribal member, the tribe is the first call and often the largest single sum available. Two Oregon tribes publish real funeral benefits, and both have Portland offices. Grand Ronde pays the funeral home up to $7,000 with a further $400 toward a reception, covering enrolled members and their spouses, parents and children under 25, and gives tribal cemetery plots to members at no cost; Member Services is 1-800-422-0232 extension 2253, and the Portland office at 4445 SW Barbur Boulevard is 503-879-1881. Siletz provides up to $6,000 in funeral assistance plus a $1,000 death benefit and asks for no formal application, only that the family notify Enrollment; 541-444-2532, or 503-238-1512 for the Portland office at 3220 SW 1st Avenue.

The nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon: Burns Paiute Tribe, 541-573-2088. Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, 541-888-9577. Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, 503-879-5211. Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, 541-444-2532. Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, 541-276-3165. Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, 541-553-1161. Coquille Indian Tribe, 541-756-0904. Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, 541-672-9405. The Klamath Tribes, 541-783-2219. For a tribe outside Oregon, contact it directly. Bureau of Indian Affairs burial assistance of up to $3,500 is separately available to indigent enrolled members, through the Northwest Regional Office at 911 NE 11th Avenue in Portland.

Rarely mentioned and worth several thousand dollars: Oregon pays funeral costs where a death was a homicide. The Department of Justice Crime Victims’ Compensation program sends up to $5,000 straight to the funeral provider, and will consider more case by case, alongside crime scene clean-up and grief counseling. Mind the deadlines, which are short: report to police within 72 hours and apply within one year. The number is 1-800-503-7983, or go through the district attorney’s victim assistance office in your county.

Unlike Washington, Oregon counties do not pay for indigent cremations. Not Washington County, not Multnomah, not Clackamas. The program is a state one, the Oregon Indigent Disposition Program, administered by the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board under ORS 97.170 on 971-673-1504, and it is routinely explained wrongly. It reimburses the funeral establishment, not the family, so a family has nothing to apply for. And it covers only the unclaimed. If a relative signs a contract to pay, the statute no longer treats that person as indigent and the door shuts. Talk to us before you sign anything.

The Washington County district attorney’s victim assistance office, on 503-846-8671, is the local way into the crime victims’ compensation program above, and it is usually faster than applying to Salem directly.

If you have worked down all of that and nothing fits, call us before you commit to anything. Sorting out what a family qualifies for is part of the job.