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Friday, March 13, 2015

Stand Under Bayocean Hotel Annex's Chimney

Would you like to stand on the beach precisely 100' below the spot where the chimney of the Hotel Bayocean Annex stood 100 years ago? Well, you can, thanks to NOAA's National Geodetic Service (NGS) and its database of survey control station datasheets kept on file even after the actual station (monuments similar to those by surveyors) no longer exist. 

Excerpts from the datasheet for KINCHELOE (RD2010):
       
DESCRIBED BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1926 (JMS). STATION IS LOCATED ON TOP OF CENTER BAFFLE WALL OF LARGE BRICK CHIMNEY, SITUATED ON TOP OF LARGE HALF CONCRETE, HALF FRAME, WHITE HOTEL AT BAY OCEAN, OREGON...

RECOVERY NOTE BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1932(LAM) ...THE STATION IS IN THE TOP OF THE CHIMNEY OF THE LARGE, WHITE BAY OCEAN HOTEL, UNOCCUPIED IN 1932...

RECOVERY NOTE BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1954 (FN). THE HOTEL ON WHICH THE STATION WAS LOCATED HAS BEEN  COMPLETELY DESTROYED AND WASHED OUT TO SEA BY THE OCEAN CURRENTS...

Photos show the chimney to be about 33' tall. So, the station would have been at an elevation of about 133', the highest man-made point on the spit.

Coordinates translated into decimal degrees are 45.52982, -123.954258. The chimney appears well out to sea on the NGS map, but you can reach it at medium to low tide. Everything west of the vegetation line (including the beach) is evidently colored blue.

Web sites like ORMAP and Coastal Atlas project the Bayocean townsite onto current areal views, so are more realistic; but they don't label the streets. Just keep in mind that the Annex was in the large block just southwest of 14th Street and Laurel Avenue (see the map at Bayocean Then And Now).  

The other historical datasheet of significance is for CORN RD2011, coordinates  45.52683, -123.951464. Excerpts from it:
DESCRIBED BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1954 (FN) LOCATED ABOUT 7 MILES NORTHWEST OF TILLAMOOK NEAR THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF WHAT IS LEFT OF BAY OCEAN ON THE SOUTHEAST SIDE OF A PROMINENT PAVED STREET INTERSECTION ABOUT 260 FEET WEST OF THE WEST SHORE OF TILLAMOOK BAY AND ABOUT 8 FEET ABOVE MEAN HIGH WATER.  STATION IS THE CORNER OF A DILAPIDATED LARGE TWO STORY FLAT-ROOFED BUILDING UNPAINTED ON SOUTH AND EAST SIDES AND PAINTED WHITE ON WEST AND NORTH SIDES.  POINT     INTERSECTED IS APPROXIMATELY 35 FEET ABOVE MEAN HIGH WATER AND IS THE     NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE BUILDING AT THE TOP OF THE SECOND STORY.

This was the Bayside Inn (see Bayocean Then and Now ). If you visit the coordinates today you'll find that the Reeder family and Tillamook County surveyors have installed signs nearby to locate what had once been the center of Bayocean commerce. After the 1952 storms made an island of Bayocean, the Mitchells hung on for a while but had left by the time "FN" visited the site in 1954. When the dike was built to reconnect Bayocean with Cape Meares in 1956 the store and other ruins were bulldozed and burned. The area was then leveled with sand dredged from Tillamook Bay.