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.

INTRODUCTION

The US Lighthouse Board erected and ran most of the lighthouses along the American coastlines until 1910. The board consisted of members from the Army, Navy, and civilians of “scientific attainment” responsible for navigation and administration of aids along the coasts under the supervision of the Treasury Department.

The Board evolved into the US Lighthouse Service under the Commerce Department in 1910.  Civilians replaced the military officers and the quasi-military life of the old Board changed.  The change was not long, however, as the Lighthouse Service merged with the US Coast Guard in 1939.  The Coast Guard is still in charge of both lighthouses and lightships along the coasts of America.

Originally, the Lighthouse Board wanted to see a light along the entire Oregon coastline.  For practical purposes, this meant a little over 20 miles, the distance over which a First-order Fresnel lens shined out.  The ideal was not reached, though not without trying.

TODAY’S SCENE

All of the lighthouses of north Oregon are defunct now. GPS and satellite navigation have made it so lighthouses make little difference. With the proper electronics, you can find your location to within a few yards today. With the light from a lighthouse, many times by the time you could see the light through the squall … Three lighthouses shown out over the seas of north Oregon. They are dark today. Two remain though you can visit only one.

POINT ADAMS LIGHTHOUSE

DEVELOPMENT

The first lighthouse built in the Oregon Territory, gained appropriations for building in 1852.  Cape Disappointment’s lighthouse lit up the dangerous bar of the Columbia River from the north side.  The lighthouses site was in a part of the new Washington Territory by the time of completion in October 1856.

From Cape Disappointment across the river’s mouth to Point Adams on the Oregon side the distance extended four to five miles across before the late 19^th early 20^th century jetties came in.  The mouth was an ever-shifting zone of sand bars changing with tides, winds, river seasonal flows and any combination.  It was apparent that one lighthouse was not enough and so a first of north Oregon Lighthouses was decided upon.

Between 1873 and 1875, construction began on what became the Point Adams lighthouse and steam foghorn.  The site selected being actually not on Point Adams – that site already taken up by Fort Stevens.  The site chosen was a low sand ridge about one mile south of the point – the point is on the south shore of the river today, not the actual river mouth where it used to be.

the house

Sand was an ever-present problem throughout the life of the station.  Grasses and scotch broom planted in the area around the lighthouse attempted to keep the sand somewhat in check.

Being not on the river side, but on the Pacific approach to the mouth, exposed the buildings to the full wrath of winter storms.  Storms were always causing needs for repair.  Ditches dug to try and drain the ground.  The structure of the lighthouse itself was like Yaquina Bay where the tower rises up from the keepers’ dwellings below.

In 1881, the light on Tillamook Rock to the south was light and the Point Adams light signature changed from a flashing red and white to a fixed red.  The foghorn discontinued.

The South Jetty went up by 1895.  After that, the Point Adams light became superfluous.  To replace the light, a light and fog signal needed placement closer to the wharfs at Fort Stevens for vessels making their way through the south channel of the river’s mouth.  Disputes with the War Department which claimed all the land to the north meant a replacement site determination came only in 1898 – Desdemona Sands.  The light finally turned off in 1899.

By this time, Battery Russell went up right next to the lighthouse.  The lighthouse served as an observatory for awhile and finally burned down by the Lighthouse Service in 1912, first of the north Oregon lighthouses to disappear.

COLUMBIA RIVER LIGHTSHIP

tHE FIRST SHIP

The Columbia River was the first site on the West Coast to gain a lightship.  In 1892, the LV-50, a wooden-hulled sail vessel, was towed into position.  The two-masted schooner had no bowsprit and mounted two fixed white lights 30 feet high into the air with a steam whistle working as a foghorn.  The anchor cable broke during a storm in 1899.

Although the ship did not ground, kept from doing so by the crew setting the sails, towing efforts failed the next day.  The ship then intentionally grounded at MacKenzie Head north of Cape Disappointment.  It took another eighteen months, but the ship moved overland 700 yards with a lot of help and refloated in Baker Bay next to Fort Canby.  After repairs in Portland, the lightship returned to her station in August 1901.

THE OTHERS

LV-50 retired with a steel-hulled, steam-driven new LV-88 in 1909.  The newer lightship was on station until 1939 with improvements to the ship added along the way – diesel engine, radio beacon, electric lights.  From 1939 until 1942 and from 1945 until 1959, LV-88 went north to Umatilla Reef near Cape Flattery.   LV-88 became a floating exhibit for the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria from 1963 to 1975 and then sold for a floating restaurant that failed in Newport, Oregon.

LV-93 swapped places with LV-88 – Umatilla Reef to here – in 1939.  The ship was the same model as LV-88.  In 1951, WAL-604 (WAL, a new designation for lightships used by the Coast Guard after the Light Service merged in1939) took station in front of the mouth of the Columbia.  WAL-604 served until 1979 when replaced by a light buoy.  Both the lightship and its replacement buoy are on display at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria.

WAL-604 served by 16 men – the crew divided into three groups.  Each group worked forty-two days on followed by twenty-one days off, and the groups scheduled so two groups were always on the ship.

TILLAMOOK HEAD LIGHTHOUSE

A NEW LIGHT

At the end of the 1870’s,a decision came about to have a lighthouse mark the area of the coast for the approach to the Columbia River mouth from the south.  Originally, Tillamook Head was considered, but rising to 1,000 feet above the sea, the headland top often obscured in the fog and Tillamook Rock was selected instead.

Nothing was ever easy for the lighthouse here.  A master mason surveying the rock for sites for buildings was swept away into the sea attempting to set foot on the rock never to be seen again.  Builders of the lighthouse were sequestered from locals to keep them from being scared away from the project.  Slowly, towards the end of 1879, the rock was chipped away for a lighthouse site ninety feet above the sea.

Early in 1880, a storm cam in with the sea crashing – not for the first time – above the top of the rock.  The men on the rock still building without any shelter barely survived.   After three quarters of a year, with enough area levelled, builders could bring in basalt rock quarried from Mount Tabor in Portland to begin construction of the lighthouse.  A one-story keeper’s house – one room for each of the two keepers provided – went up with the tower rising above putting a First-order Fresnel lens 133 feet above the sea flashing out a white signal every five seconds.  A foghorn could blast out every ninety seconds when needed with water for the signal collected for the roof.  A landing wharf, iron stairway and tramway linked a small wharf to the house above.

TERRIBLE TILLY

Storms were a constant nemesis to the lighthouse.  Waves and rocks often crashed over and through the lighthouse.  The roof of the lighthouse after 1897 raised up by five feet with steel beams and concrete placed to keep the sea from plunging through the roof.

There were always four keepers on the rock working three months on and two weeks off.  Their families lived ashore.  Mental stress added to the physical difficulties of life on the rock, nicknamed, “Terrible Tilly”.  Only one death occurred on the rock.  On 2 August 1911, one of the assistant keepers was painting the derrick used to haul supplies up from the wharf.  He fell thirty feet onto the rocks, eventually dying of his injuries.

The light shone out for seventy-seven years before it turned off 1 September 1957 – a second of the north Oregon lighthouses to go dark – replaced with by a red whistle buoy one mile seaward from the rock.

STILL A ROCK

In 1980, two local real estate developers bought the rock – not the first purchase since the light turned off – with the idea of turning it into a columbarium.  They actually gathered about 30 urns placing them on the rock.  Their license was revoked in 1999.  The developers still have ideas of continuing, but time goes on.  A wonderful drone footage of the lighthouse rock site found here from 2017.

CAPE MEARES LIGHTHOUSE

BEGINNINGS

This headland, originally named Cape Lookout by English sea captain John Meares, with mapmakers ending up giving the name to another headland ten miles to the south.  In 1857, it was decided to rename the original Cape Lookout than to correct the maps.  Cape Meares gained its name for the Englishman.

Line-of-sight along the Oregon coast and proximity to Tillamook Bay led to Congress approving money to construct the lighthouse, two keeper’s houses, a couple oil house, barn and a cistern.  The First-order Fresnel lens from Henry-Lepaute firm in France shown out on the first day of 1890.

OPERATION

Thanks its placement atop two-hundred-foot cliffs, the lighthouse did not have to be very high.  At only thirty-eight feet tall, it is Oregon’s shortest on the coast.  The lens seen over 21 miles away.

The keeper’s homes set about 1,000 feet farther away and a little higher from the lighthouse – where the parking lot sits today.  At first, supplies from Tillamook had to be rowed in across the bay to the north spit, but in 1893, a rough wagon road was built to connect with a county road in the village of Netarts to the south.

In 1903, the head keeper died on duty of pneumonia.  His wife filled in for a few weeks before a new keeper showed up a month later.

The lighthouse went electric in 1934 and the oil houses demolished.  After an automated beacon came in 1963, the lighthouse decommissioned – third and last of the north Oregon lighthouses to close.  The tower was next, but locals were able to convince the Coast Guard to lease the building to Tillamook County a year later.

RETIREMENT

Vandals hit the abandoned lighthouse, stealing four prisms from the Fresnel lens. The State Parks Department took control in 1968.  One of the prisms was recovered in a drug raid in Portland in 1984 and the other three eventually were returned.

Two young men shot up the lantern room one night in 2010 with an estimated $500,000 in damage created.  Caught a month later and the two pled guilty. The light on the beacon turned off 25 June 2014.  GPS systems allowing people to know where they are in the sea without lights.

SOURCES

To learn more about the Life-Saving Services and their continued work as part of the Coast Guard, you really need to start with David Pinyerd’s master thesis from the University of Oregon which he has put online, The Preservation of Pre-World War II Coast Guard Architecture in Oregon. He also authored one of the Arcadia Publishing volumes from their popular Images of America series, Lighthouses and Life-Saving on the Oregon Coast.

The US Coast Guard History site and the Facebook sites of the different stations along the coast make for greater understanding of the past and present challenges of the Coast Guard – Cape Disappointment, National Motor Lifeboat School, Tillamook Bay, Depoe Bay, Yaquina Bay, Siuslaw River, Umpqua River, Chetco River, North Bend sector, Columbia River sector and Portland.

Several articles have been cited from the Oregon Encyclopedia efforts operated by the Oregon Historical Society – Washington has a similar effort entitled Historylink.

There is lots of information to be found on the Lighthouse Friends website and the US Life-Saving Service Heritage Association website, as well.