Fort Stevens National Cemetery is one of the smaller units under the jurisdiction of the Veterans Administration. One of the newest units, the cemetery transferred over from the Army in 2020. Although one of the smallest cemeteries within the National Cemetery system, there still are openings for new burials.
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A short trail winds through the forest and down the hill from the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. It connects to the road ascending from the Cape Disappointment Coast Guard Station on the Baker Bay (east) side of the headland on which the lighthouse sits.
Earlier posts included information about the lighthouse, the old artillery fort – Fort Canby – on which the Coast Guard station sits today, and a little about the evolution of the Coast Guard mission at the mouth of the Columbia River.
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In the last post, we saw Johan Georg Rapp and 600 like-minded Pietists coming from Germany to establish a new communal settlement just north of the Ohio River called Harmonie. After a decade, they set out downriver to build a New Harmony along the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana. Another decade brought Rapp and his followers back upriver to found their last town, Oikonomie, better known as Economy. Here, Rapp would continue to change the focus of simple agricultural communalism to more of a spirit of amassing wealth – still within a communal picture. This would allow Rapp and the Harmony Society to greet Jesus’ return at the beginning of the Second Coming with enough material sustenance to last the thousand years of the new Millennium.
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Johann Georg Rapp – anglicized to George Rapp – led those who would follow from southwestern Germany to found the first of three communal villages – Harmony – in the New World in 1805. Five other villages would spin off from these in the course of time. Who was George Rapp and who were his followers?
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In Genesis, Bethel is the place where Abram stayed building an altar on his way to Egypt and on his return. Later, in the same record, fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau, Jacob falls asleep on a stone dreaming of a ladder filled with angels stretching between Heaven and Earth. At the top of the ladder, God, who promises Jacob the land of Canaan. When Jacob wakes, he anoints the stone (baetylus) with oil and names the place where he his dream occurred, Bethel. So, as with Abram and Jacob, Wilhelm Keil led his communal German-American followers to a new Bethel. This one in the middle of Missouri.
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From a European birth, Wilhelm Keil made his way in fits and starts, all the way from one coast to the other, finishing his days in the communal town he founded, Aurora, Oregon. The story of his life was unusual to say the least.
Keil started out in what would soon be the Prussian province of Saxony. Born 6 March 1811 in the town of Bleicherode, just a year before the Royal Saxon army was marching off as part of Napoleon’s Grand Armee on its date in Russia.
NOTE: This is the first post of four moving backwards in time from the German-American communal town in Oregon of Aurora to other like settlements from which the Aurorans sprung out from.
Continue readingThe Life-Saving Service had a long impact on the new Coast Guard in terms of drills and rescue organization for many years. With even better equipment, helicopters, better boats, better training, the Coast Guard has continued to build on the service of their forebears in the Life-Saving Service serving the mariners of Oregon.
Now, life saving, falling into the category of search and rescue today, is an important function of the Coast Guard, especially along the coast of Oregon. But it is only one of many jobs tackled by the Coasties – smuggling interdiction, law enforcement, navigation aids are all some of the other many jobs the Coast Guard is entrusted with.
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Lighthouses were one thing to keep mariners safe as they traveled along the Pacific Coast, in and out of harbors and river bars. When they were not enough, a newer organization in Oregon appeared, the Life-Saving Service.
The official US Life-Saving Service got its start in 1878, though an ad-hoc arrangement went back further to 1848 when a series of unmanned stations, run by volunteers – similar to volunteer fire departments – existed along the coasts of New Jersey and Massachusetts. Without full-time employees, no organization or standardization of equipment or men, the results were middling at best.
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The lighthouses found along the Oregon Coastline – north and south – draw thousands of visitors each year. Most still function, sending out light into the gloom and night. Much less is known about a trio of lighthouses guiding ships down the mighty Columbia River – a river referred to in 1766 as the “Oregon” to the port of Portland.
Getting across the notorious Columbia River bar was only the first leg. Ships on their way to Portland then had a long river voyage up the Columbia – 101 miles – followed by a right turn up the Willamette – another 11 miles. To help guide them required a bar pilot and once into the river proper, a river pilot would help the rest of the way.
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In case you did not read my last post about southern Oregon lighthouses, I will repeat some of the basic history leading to the lighthouses of north Oregon.
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