For years I wondered about the posts visible during low tide running parallel to Dike Road and wider posts just barely visible above the mudflats crossing the small inlet just northeast of the gate at the south end of the hills.
I found no evidence of them in aerial photos and maps from individual and archival sources or Army Corps of Engineers records at the National Archives. I thought the posts might have been installed after the breakwater was built in 1956 because they were far out into the bay before then, though not to the end of the original pier. Perry Reeder said they were there when he was a kid. He thought they were what's left of bulkheads used to protect the bay side of the spit during storms. A recently discovered aerial photograph, taken by Hugh Ackroyd in 1949, confirms Perry's recollections. The view is from the southwest, so 12th Avenue, leading down to the pier is out of sight to the right.
Posts running parallel to Dike Rd and crossing the inlet from the gate at the base of the hills.
Comparing Ackroyd's 1949 aerial to a profile view from the north not long after the Bayocean was finished - 100' elevation - in 1912 gives you a sense of the great volume of sand lost to erosion during the intervening 37 years. The concrete walls and basement of the first floor of the Annex were all that remained after the upper stories were deconstructed, by 1938.
The cottages shown at the top were all built by Johan Poulsen, Portland lumber baron, in 1912 for use by himself and his daughters' families. They were rented out to the Coast Guard to house a war dog beach patrol unit during World War II. The most southerly of the houses, known later as the Hicks House, was moved to the mainland in 1952, just before Bayocean became an island. The house closest to the edge was sold to A.T. Dolan. It burned to the ground shortly after Ackroyd shot his aerial. The house closest to the bay, also last owned by the Hicks, fell to the shore in 1954. The last house to fall (Notdurft's; hidden behind the trees to the right) succumbed in 1960.
I found no evidence of them in aerial photos and maps from individual and archival sources or Army Corps of Engineers records at the National Archives. I thought the posts might have been installed after the breakwater was built in 1956 because they were far out into the bay before then, though not to the end of the original pier. Perry Reeder said they were there when he was a kid. He thought they were what's left of bulkheads used to protect the bay side of the spit during storms. A recently discovered aerial photograph, taken by Hugh Ackroyd in 1949, confirms Perry's recollections. The view is from the southwest, so 12th Avenue, leading down to the pier is out of sight to the right.
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| Print and high-resolution digital versions of Ackroyd 01751-05 can be ordered at www.historicphotoarchive.net or by calling Thomas Robinson at 503-460-0415. He was kind enough to allow me to display it here when I told him the significance. |
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Posts running parallel to Dike Rd and crossing the inlet from the gate at the base of the hills.Comparing Ackroyd's 1949 aerial to a profile view from the north not long after the Bayocean was finished - 100' elevation - in 1912 gives you a sense of the great volume of sand lost to erosion during the intervening 37 years. The concrete walls and basement of the first floor of the Annex were all that remained after the upper stories were deconstructed, by 1938.
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| Bayocean photo #214 at the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum. Call (503) 842-4553 for print or digital copies. |
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