Cremation Services

Providence Milwaukie Hospital at 10150 SE 32nd Avenue is the city’s own hospital, licensed for 77 beds, with an emergency department. It opened in 1968 as Dwyer Memorial and joined Providence in 1986, and with 642 staff it is also the largest employer in Milwaukie. Most Milwaukie residents who die in the hospital die here.

Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center at 10180 SE Sunnyside Road in Clackamas is about five miles east and takes Kaiser members from across the east metro, which in this region is a large share of families. Adventist Health Portland on SE Market Street is roughly six miles north.

Two licensed hospice agencies have Milwaukie addresses: AgeRight Hospice at 4560 SE International Way and Heart 2 Heart Hospice Care at 14020 SE Johnson Road. Bristol, Agape and Providence all cover the area from Clackamas or Portland.

We collect from all of these, and from private homes and care facilities, at any hour. If your person is on hospice service, their nurse can call us directly.

This is the question that trips up Milwaukie families, because the answer depends on where the death happened rather than where your person lived.

The county of death sets the jurisdiction. A Milwaukie resident who dies at Providence Milwaukie or Kaiser Sunnyside is a Clackamas County death. One who dies at Adventist Health Portland, Providence Portland or OHSU is a Multnomah County death, and the certificate must be ordered from Multnomah, not Clackamas. Ordering from the wrong county wastes a week.

Clackamas County Vital Records is at 2051 Kaen Road, Suite 367, Oregon City, OR 97045. The number is 503-655-8406. Certified copies are $25.00 each, with no discount for ordering several. The office is open Monday to Thursday, 7:00 to 6:00, and closed on Fridays, which is unusual and worth planning around. In person is often same day; by mail most people have it within a week. Online ordering runs through Permitium and adds a service fee and a card processing fee on top of the $25.

Clackamas can only issue for deaths that occurred in the county within the past six months. Beyond that, or for another county, it goes to Oregon Health Authority. We order certificates at $30 each and file the record for you, which includes working out which county you are actually dealing with.

If you are looking for the Clackamas Review, it still exists but not under that name. It published its last weekly edition in June 2023, went monthly that August, and was renamed The Milwaukie Review. It is still publishing, which is more than can be said for several papers around it.

Obituaries go through milwaukiereview.com or 503-620-7355, with up to two photographs. They appear in the print paper, on the website and in a daily obituary email. The paper does not publish a rate card; a representative calls back with a figure based on length and photographs.

The Oregonian starts at $264 and includes a permanent online memorial page. The Portland Tribune stopped printing in June 2025 and the Sandy Post and Estacada News closed that July, so several of the titles still listed on local funeral home pages are no longer options. A complete obituary on this site, with photographs, is included in our price at no charge.

Oregon sets no state law governing where cremated remains may be kept or scattered. Ashes may stay at home, be divided among family members, be buried, or be scattered on private land with the owner’s permission. Scattering on federal land generally requires a permit, and rules differ by agency.

Scattering at sea is available through us for $195.

Milwaukie Pioneer Cemetery on SE 17th Avenue, just north of Waverly, began in 1850 and holds more than 2,150 burials. It was declared full in the 1950s and is now cared for by a volunteer association on donations. It is a lovely piece of local history but not, in the ordinary case, somewhere new interments happen. If you have a family connection there, call Mark Neubauer at 503-997-9495 before assuming either way.

For a new interment the practical options are just southeast, on Mount Scott. Lincoln Memorial Park at 11801 SE Mount Scott Boulevard has indoor and outdoor columbaria, glass-front niches, cremation gardens for urn burial or scattering, and benches that hold up to four urns; it is owned by Dignity Memorial. Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial at 6705 SE 14th Avenue in Sellwood, about two miles north, holds the largest mausoleum and columbarium complex in the metro.

Directly across the road from Lincoln is Willamette National Cemetery, 11800 SE Mount Scott Boulevard, which has columbaria with space available and where interment is free to eligible veterans and their spouses. The number is 503-273-5250. It is the most-used cremation interment site for Milwaukie veterans and a good many families never learn they qualify.

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.

More money is left unclaimed here than in almost any other part of settling a death, usually because nobody tells the family it exists. These are the sources worth checking, in the order most likely to apply.

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 say “I want to apply for a lump-sum death payment.” Some people can now start the claim through a my Social Security account. If you would rather go in person, note that Social Security now requires an appointment, and the current list of offices is at ssa.gov/locator. We do not print office addresses here because they change and a wasted trip is the last thing you need.

If the person was a veteran, start here before anything else. Willamette National Cemetery, 11800 SE Mount Scott Boulevard in Portland, is the nearest VA national cemetery, at 503-273-5250. It has space for both casketed and cremated remains. The office is open weekdays 8:00 to 4:30 and the grounds daily from 7:00. From Milwaukie it is about four miles east, up onto Mount Scott and directly across the road from Lincoln Memorial Park.

The VA’s own wording is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. Burial benefits include “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.” The VA adds that cremated remains are inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” A spouse or dependent child is interred at no cost too, though their name is inscribed on the veteran’s headstone rather than given a separate marker. A surviving spouse who remarried after the veteran’s death remains eligible, which is the point people most often get wrong. To arrange an interment at need, the National Cemetery Scheduling Office is 1-800-535-1117, with discharge papers faxed to 1-866-900-6417. That is faster than calling the cemetery.

Separately, for a death not connected to service, the VA pays a $1,002 burial allowance and a $1,002 plot allowance as of October 1, 2025, claimed on VA Form 21P-530EZ within two years of the burial. One catch that costs families money: the plot allowance is not payable if the interment is in a national cemetery, because there is no plot cost to reimburse. You get the niche free, or you get the plot allowance. Not both. The VA benefits line is 1-800-827-1000.

Your county veteran service office will file the VA paperwork for you, free, and correctly, which is worth more than it sounds. Clackamas County Veteran Services is at 2051 Kaen Road, Suite 281, Oregon City, on 503-650-5631. They state plainly that they assist with burial and survivor benefits. Open Monday to Thursday, closed Fridays, by appointment. The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs is at 1-800-692-9666.

If the person was an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe, ask the tribe first. Two Oregon tribes publish substantial funeral benefits and both keep Portland offices. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde pay the funeral home up to $7,000, plus $400 toward a reception, for enrolled members and their spouses, parents and children under 25, and plots at the tribal cemetery are free to members; call Member Services at 1-800-422-0232 extension 2253, or the Portland office at 4445 SW Barbur Boulevard on 503-879-1881. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians provide up to $6,000 in funeral assistance and a $1,000 death benefit, with no formal application needed; call 541-444-2532, or the Portland office at 3220 SW 1st Avenue at 503-238-1512.

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, Portland.

If the death was a homicide, Oregon pays funeral costs. The Crime Victims’ Compensation program at the Department of Justice pays up to $5,000 directly to the funeral provider, with more possible case by case, plus crime scene clean-up and grief counseling for the family. Two deadlines are strict: the crime must be reported to police within 72 hours, and the application filed within one year. Call 1-800-503-7983, or apply through your county district attorney’s victim assistance office.

Oregon works differently from Washington and the difference matters. There is no county indigent cremation program in Multnomah, Washington or Clackamas county. What exists is a state program, the Oregon Indigent Disposition Program, run by the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board under ORS 97.170. Two things about it are usually misexplained. It reimburses the funeral establishment, not the family, so a family cannot apply. And it only covers a person whose body is unclaimed: if anyone signs a contract to pay for the disposition, that person is by statute not indigent and the program does not apply. The board is at 971-673-1504. If you are in that position, tell us before you sign anything and we will explain what your options actually are.

Remember that a Milwaukie death may be a Multnomah County death rather than a Clackamas one, depending where it happened. The county veteran service office follows where you live; the death record follows where the death occurred.

If none of this fits, tell us anyway. We would rather spend ten minutes working out what you qualify for than have you borrow money you did not need to borrow.