The Hillsboro Connection

Postcard courtesy of Mark Moore, "Oregon Electric Railway"
by Richard Thompson,  Oregon Encyclopedia. 

Bayocean was closely connected to Hillsboro from the start. Sales and construction of the resort would not have begun if, in September 1906, Elmer Lytle had not promised Tillamook County completion of his Pacific Railway and Navigation Company (PNRC) by the end of 1908 in exchange for their guaranteeing rights of way from the county line and land for a Tillamook Station. Lytle did not keep his promise - which was the primary reason the resort failed financially  - but passengers from Portland could travel to Tillamook (after reaching Hillsboro on the Oregon Electric Railway) on the PNRC after November 10, 1911. 

Lytle lost his PNRC to the Southern Pacific Railroad soon after it was finished. The Port of Tillamook took over increasingly more of the line after 1983, until a flood damaged so much of it in 2007 that it was shut down permanently.("Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad"). It's now destined to become the Salmonberry Trail, for the benefit of hikers and bicyclists. Just for the fun of it, I hiked all accessible existing sections in 2022. I also visited the original Hillsboro station after finding out it still stood in the same location. The photo to the right is of its northeast corner, taken from SE Cedar Street looking towards S 1st Avenue, the same perspective as the postcard above.

Card provided by granddaughter Sue Bagley Barr.

Because of this key transportation link, many of the people involved with the Bayocean during the half century it existed were from Hillsboro. The most prominent of them was Judge George Bagley. In addition to serving as Tillamook's Circuit Court Judge, he owned cabins on the spit. So did others from Hillsboro, like the Currins. 

In addition those cited here, see Bayocean: Atlantis of Oregon for additional sources and information. If you are unfamiliar with the Bayocean story, please read The Bayocean Story in Brief.  Look at the Index to find more articles that might be of interest. 

The Children Of Bayocean

In 2015, Sue Bagley Barr wrote a wonderful story about her early years growing up on Bayocean for her family titled The Bagleys of Bayocean and allowed me to post it here for others to enjoy. She has just updated it with new information discovered over the last four years about her grandfather Judge George Bagley, who owned and lost one of the few homes built north of the Hotel Bayocean Annex on High Street. 

Most of what's been written about Bayocean focuses on the tragedy of a resort town and the homes of its residents being destroyed by the sea. So it is refreshing to see how good life was for the families who lived there during and just after World War II. The views of houses, streets, sidewalks, stores, etc. are different than I've seen elsewhere: they depict people living normal lives in an extraordinary place. And little Sue and Sally are such cuties. 

Perry Reeder loves to talk of the sugar sands of Tillamook Bay and snorkeling for hours along the shallow bay waters that were protected from sea winds by a high ridge of sand during languid summer days. He is featured in many of my posts and has obliged my questions on many occasions, as did Barbara Bennett before her death.

Mike Watkins and his dog Sally 

Mike Watkins was one of the younger boys. He lived in the Oceanview subdivision, just south of Bayocean Park in the community of Cape Meares, but often ventured out onto the spit in order to slide down the long, steep, pure sand slopes on cardboard. He also collected wooden water pipe couplers. 

Phyllis riding Vance's cast.

The oldest boy was Jesse Vance Mason, who went by his middle name. His step-father Walter (Shorty) Locke managed Bungalow City and they lived just across the street in a house they built. Vance often led the younger boys in explorations of ruins and into the wilder parts of Bayocean. When he saw blimps coming Vance would run to the highest ridge and yell up at the pilots asking them to drop candy bars (the military wasn't rationed like civilians), which they often did, along with notes asking older girls to meet them at a dance on the weekend.  When a blimp once crashed into Tillamook Bay, Vance took advantage of their teacher Mrs. Mitchell (not Ida) having let them out of school early to scavenge chunks of rubber, maps, a radio, and some flares. Unfortunately, he had to give it all back to FBI agents when they came calling. Vance's half-sister, Phyllis (Locke) Anderson, loved the bay so much that her mother had to tie her down when Vance wasn't around in order to keep her from scampering off to it every time she looked away. Phyllis and other girls recall the Bennett and Reeder boys finding some sort of odd satisfaction from tossing frogs at them. I can't imagine. 

Other posts that include Baycoean alumni can be found at the Index page. 

1949 Ackroyd Aerial Depicts Bayocean Hotel Ruins and Erosion

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. 

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.

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.

Bayocean photo #214 at the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum. Call (503) 842-4553 for print or digital copies.

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.   

See the Index page to find more stories like this.

Steinhilber House Slid Off Cape Meares Not Bayocean

Over a year ago, I read a retrospective article in the Tillamook Headlight Herald of November 16, 1977, looking back twenty-five years to the storm that put an end to Bayocean. The photo in the microfilm version was so bad I could not see any details, but the caption said the house sliding into the sea belonged to someone named Steinhilber. I didn't recognize the name, so I called Bayocean alumni. They didn't either. 

At the next opportunity, I looked through deed indexes at the Tillamook County Clerks' office but could find no evidence of a Steinhilber ever purchasing property in Bayocean Park. I did find that Theodore and Nannie Steinhilber had purchased part of Henry Sampson's original land claim on the north side of Cape Meares on September 14, 1898. This was long before the Potters platted Bayocean Park or any houses fell due to erosion. 

Searching Ancestry.com and online newspaper archives I discovered that Nannie was a niece of Henry and that Theodore had a land claim that eventually became part of the Lake Lytle subdivision. Friend and historian Don Best shared "Rockaway Memories," a history that his parents helped publish in 1981, which confirmed this. 

Sometime later I found a folder titled "Steinhilber" at the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, but all it contained was a photo with "Mr. Steinhilber" written on the back. The 1977 article's caption attributed the photo to the museum, but I could not find it among their Bayocean photo collection. A few trips later I got a better copy of the photo itself from the original newspaper article that the Tillamook County Library was kind enough to let me view. It immediately became obvious the photo was not of Bayocean. The background looked like the north side of Cape Meares to me. I sent a copy to Perry Reeder and Mike Watkins. They both concurred. 

Realizing this made me wonder if the photo had been taken during the Cape Meares landslide of May/June 1899 that I wrote about earlier, which had nothing to do with erosion eventually caused by the north jetty. Sources I'd used then provided a drawing with buildings, but no names. So I looked through issues of the Tillamook Headlight during that period and found the progressive destruction of Steinhilber's house reported in each issue for a month. The June 1st edition said that the same weekend Mr. Steinhilber visited his place an "excursion party came from Tillamook on Sunday, and also the brass band to see the landslide." The only photographer in Tillamook at the time was Otto Heins, so the photo was likely taken by him. The photo was not published in the Headlight, but Steinhilber's name was mentioned a lot during the 1890s. He had been one of the early owners of the Headlight, served as deputy sheriff, and made a living buying and selling property. He obviously didn't have good timing on this transaction, but uncle Henry only charged them $75 and took other property in trade.

When I shared my frustration at not being able to find the photo among their Bayocean collection, Ruby Fry-Matson suggested I look through their more general photo albums. Bingo. It was in "Album 2: Places," item #500 contributed by Mr. & Mrs. Carl Hunt of Tillamook. The caption was clear to me, but the reporter had evidently not understood how Barnegat and Bayocean were related in 1977. The photo in the newspaper cropped out one of the two buildings not affected by the slide. These WERE eventually destroyed by erosion.

See the Index page to find more stories like this.

Sherwood House

Photo from Lorraine Eckhardt's Bayocean album. The first and middle names of Albert 
George and Orilla Sarah Jones are reversed in many official and unofficial records.  

A handwritten note from Howard Sherwood, Jr. (Buck) in the Cape Meares (Bayocean School) Community Center scrapbook says that George A. Jones salvaged lumber from the Bayocean Natatorium to build a large house for himself and his wife "Rilly" on Cape Meares in 1933 and 1934. He also installed a buggy above a tall hop plant out front, rented out a few rooms, kept a few grocery items to sell picnickers, and called their place the "Buggy Knot Inn." 

Photo of the south side of the house from Cape Meares Community Center
(Bayocean School) scrapbook. People unidentified. A buggy wheel is just
barely visible on the left, which would be in the front of the house. Columns
attributed to the Bayocean Natatorium are shown extending above the roof.

Photo of Buck Sherwood from Mike Watkins, taken six years
before his death in 2005. Buck took many photos of Bayocean 
used in newspaper articles, books and on websites, like mine.  

Testimony submitted to the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) by Jones in 1938* suggests another source of lumber for their home. He reported surveying and supervising early construction on Bayocean, from 1907 to 1909, and returning to the area in 1930. In 1932 he purchased and deconstructed the summer cabin of D.S. and Vesta Williams. In 1961, Samual Dicken, head of the Oregon State University Geology Department, wrote in a report titled "Some Recent Changes of the Oregon Coast" that the Williams cottage was on a bench in the dunes about 50' above the beach and that he measured erosion at 1' per year from 1926 (when it first became noticeable) until 1932 when it jumped to 6' per year. Tillamook County Deed Book 32, page 535 (DB 32:535) shows they purchased lot 22 in block 67 (67:22) in 1915. Judge George Bagley and Swan Hawkinson, who also had Bayocean cottages, confirmed Jones' account in their testimony to the USACE. Hawkinson said the Williamses first tried moving their house uphill and away from the ocean. Their cottage would have been much smaller than Jones' house so he needed more lumber. 

Buck Sherwood told Mike Watkins, his boyhood neighbor and lifelong friend, that Jones built the house for less than $1000. This figure would have included what Jones paid Williams and the Tillamook-Bayocean Company who then owned the Natatorium. Why didn't Jones mention Williams to Buck (his family didn't move to Bayocean until 1938, so all of what he wrote must have come from Jones)? Perhaps it just wasn't as good a story. If Jones had realized it, he could have bragged that some of his home's lumber came from the most northerly home ever built on a Bayocean lot. The Williams cottage was near the end of the paved section of High Street, a half-mile north of the first house lost five years earlier, and 1000' north of the Mueller cabin (see the map in that post to locate these properties) moved over to the bayside five years later.  

Jones had purchased the lot (12:15) in the Oceanview Subdivision from George Higgins back in 1915. While still serving as the Cape Meares Lighthouse Keeper, Higgins took advantage of Bayocean publicity by developing and advertising his lots in Tillamook newspapers (the Potters advertised in big city papers) as a lower priced alternative. Jones and his wife bought eight adjacent lots (7-12 and 16 -17) during the 1930s. Buck said his family moved into the house in 1940. The deed for Howard (Sr.) and Maude Sherwood's purchase of all nine lots was not recorded until 1948 (DB 116:269) so they likely bought them on contract. Members of the family continued living there until 1990, which is why neighbors still refer to it as the "Sherwood House."

See the Index page to find more stories like this. 

* From USACE records at the Seattle branch of the National Archives: POR-81; Civil Works Project Files, 1902-1968; Box 175; File 7250 Bayocean Preliminary Exams & Surveys.

Moving It Didn't Save Muellers' Cabin

 Lorraine Eckhart's Bayocean album includes this photo with notes added by Buck Sherwood. The Notdurft cottage at the top
 was the last house to fall. The "Rainbow House" in the middle was deconstructed by Lewis and Hilda Bennett. Their garage 
was the last structure to go, in 1971.

When the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) built the breakwater that reconnected Bayocean spit to the mainland in 1956, they also bulldozed and burned all but three of the buildings still standing, and then backfilled the entire area with sand dredged from the bay to add elevation and avoid future breaches. The house in the photo with its basement filled with sand and labeled "Mueller place" had been moved there from the northern ridgeline a couple decades earlier - to escape erosion. 

According to Tillamook County Deed Book 67, pages 280-281 (DB 67:280-281), Conrad and Elvira Mueller purchased lot 52 in block 67 (67:52) on June 11, 1932. This was on the ocean side of High Street, about 3/8 of a mile north of the Poulsen (later Hicks/Dolan) houses, directly across from the first Bayocean house owned by Judge George Bagley, at lot 62:A (he also owned adjacent lots 13-16). 

Testimony submitted to the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1938 by Judge Bagley (POR-81; Civil Works Project Files, 1902-1968; Box 175; File 7250 Bayocean Preliminary Exams & Surveys. Seattle NARA) said that a newer house across the street from his had been moved down to the bay just the year before (1937) in order to avoid the threat of erosion. Bagley and others mention two other houses in the same block that were deconstructed instead of moved. The Muellers likely chose to move theirs because they had just built it (one can only imagine that the rate of erosion had suddenly increased). 

D.C. Baker built a basement and placed the house for the Muellers on a lot they purchased June 7, 1937, at 57:29 (DB 74:89). "Bayocean News" columns in the Tillamook Headlight Herald gave periodic updates during the summer and fall of 1937, talked about Baker having been an early manager of Cottage Park, and declared on October 7th that the house was "practically ready for occupancy again, after being moved from the hill to a location near the [Rainbow] Girl's Club building." They later purchased adjacent lots 30 and 31 at foreclosure sales. 

Section of original Bayocean plat map from Tillamook County Surveyor's office. Mueller locations are colored green,
as is the route their house would have taken. Bagley lots are in orange. Other landmarks are purple. 

The Muellers called their cabin on the bay "Huckleberry Inn" and traveled from their home in Portland to stay there frequently. A sketch on page 81 of Bayocean: The Oregon Town That Fell Into The Sea refers to Conrad as "Horse." This is interesting given his WW II draft card lists his height at just 5'5". Censuses and directories indicate Mueller was a building contractor, so perhaps great strength earned him the nickname (sources were viewed at Ancestry.com).  

On May 8, 1945 (DB 90:607-608) the Muellers sold their cabin. By the time Perry Reeder's family rented it in 1947 subsequent owners had hung a sign on the front porch renaming it the "Dew Drop Inn." Perry recalls the vine roses clinging to a fence that ran the perimeter of the property and made good use of the large chicken coop in the back. 

The last owners of the house were the Currins, who purchased it June 25, 1952 (DB 134:90-91), just five months before the entire southern part of Bayocean was blown out by a winter storm. This was the fourth house lost by the Currins on Bayocean. If they reasoned that "this would have to be one of the last houses to go" when they bought it they would have been right - but it did go. 

See the Index page for other posts listed by category. 

Crabapple Park

All the low lying Bayocean streets and buildings that survived the November 1952 breach and subsequent erosion were buried by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1956. Three houses at higher elevation survived initially. The last one fell in 1960. A few streets above the fill line were far enough back to not fall into the sea but were eventually buried by sand carried by the wind. 

Photo from Phyllis Locke Anderson of neighbors
hanging out at the site of the 2015 excavation 

In October 2015, Perry Reeder guided his family in excavating a small section of curb and pavement on the west side of High Terrace (see plat map below), a little north of 12th Avenue, just before it turned northwest and uphill. In my photo to the left, taken soon after the excavation, the curb is the horizontal strip, aligned approximately north/south. The semicircle just below and east of it is the pavement. The spot straddles lots A and 2 in Block 55. It was the spot Perry's family first parked their car in 1944, so they could rent a cabin in Cottage Park from Walter (Shorty) Locke, who lived across the street in lot 4. 

When I asked Perry how he found the spot, he said he used two crabapple trees to get his bearings. I was impressed with his memory and surprised to learn that some fauna had survived the wrath of the sea in this southern section of Bayocean. I'd not noticed them before but photographed them on my next trip. They're nestled in the lee of the highest remaining point south of the hills, lone sentinel to the Bayocean that once was. Using Coast Atlas and adjusting for known discrepancies in tax lot overlays, my best estimate is that the trees are in lot 39 of block 54, perhaps extending into lot 38. Perry said he never met the owners and that no houses were ever built along the south side of 12th Avenue, so it remained park-like. 

Deed records show lot 39 was owned by Gerald and Nellie Reeher during Perry's era, and lot 38 was owned by Martin and Jeanette Nelson. The Reehers eventually lost their lot to the county, but the Nelsons' son Donald is still on record owning theirs. Gerald and Nellie Reeher moved to Tillamook in 1922 and started Reeher Furniture. They moved to Salem in 1935 according to the September 24, 1935, Statesman Journal. They must have become close friends with Francis and Ida Mitchell while in Tillamook because the Tillamook Headlight-Herald reported them giving Francis a ride (from the Oregon State Hospital in Salem) to Ida's funeral in 1953. And when Francis died in 1965, Nellie purchased a joint cemetery lot for them. 

All of this is just west of the Bayocean town site sign put up by the Reeders. Follow the trail to the ocean from it and watch for a trail to the right (north) and a small driftwood fence. GPS coordinates are 45.527324N 123.952463W. To get to the townsite sign, walk north from the parking lot on Dike Road and look for a post engraved "Bayocean Town Site." Follow the trail west. Look for another post on the left and take the trail south from there to the townsite sign. When I visited the excavation in September 2018, I found that sand had already filled the bottom of the hole by more than a foot - the deepest I cared to dig with my hands.

Find other posts in this and other categories on the Index page.  

Perry Reeder Presentation August 19, 2015

Perry Reeder gave his Bayocean presentation to a packed house at the Tillamook County Library on August 19th, 2015. Sarah Beeler did a great job of promoting the event by placing a sign at the entrance to the library and advertising in the Tillamook Headlight Herald weeks in advance. I posted in on several Facebook groups and saw a few history friends in the audience, some even came over from Portland. Unfortunately, our efforts were so successful, and the interest so high, that some folks had to be turned away, but not before Perry promised them to schedule another presentation. It was held on October 24th at 1 PM. 

Sarah MacDonald getting things ready for the Bayocean presentation

by her father, Perry Reeder, August 19, 2015 

Perry used a PowerPoint, created by his daughter Sarah MacDonald, to accompany his telling of the geological processes that caused Bayocean's demise - and its human impact. Perry added some entertaining personal stories along the way. After an hour or so, he answered questions from the audience.  

Earlier in the day, Bayocean alumni gathered at the community center/schoolhouse to reminisce. They were gracious in letting me hound them with questions. 

Perry Reeder at Bayocean sign
July 3, 2013
Photo by Sarah MacDonald

Sarah MacDonald photo of folks gathered at the Cape Meares
Community Center August 19, 2015, who lived on Bayocean
and Cape Meares before a storm made it an island in 1952

Perry's family moved to Bayocean Park when he was six years old - in 1944. With his buddies, he explored the ruins, yelled at the blimp pilots as they passed close overhead each day, kept cool snorkeling along the sandy shores of the bay, and listened to Mr. Mitchell's sermons while waiting for the bus or buying candy at his store. In 1950, watching the sea moving relentlessly closer, his family moved to Cape Meares. There he eventually raised his own family while watching Bayocean's destruction - and rebuilding.

Prior to the construction of Tillamook Bay's South Jetty, the Army Corps of  Engineers hired Perry to captain a charter boat, from which their engineers and scientists took measurements that helped finalize its design. From 2002 to 2003 he served on the Bayocean Task Force. Perry owns a piece of property on the spit. A few years ago he coordinated county and family efforts to post signs to show where the business center of Bayocean had once stood - on the bay side of the spit. The fact that the signs are closer to the ocean now graphically illustrates the extensive geological changes that have occurred.  Perry now lives in Oceanside and spends most days managing his family farm in Beaver. In July 2017 Perry and his daughter Sarah wrote Bayocean: Memories Beneath the Sand. 

Grant McOmie Captures The Bayocean Story

Wednesday, June 17th, I had the pleasure of introducing Grant McOmie and his videographer/editor Jeff Kastner to Bayocean alumni, tagging along while the alumni showed them around the spit's "townsite", and giving Grant and Jeff a tour of the few buildings moved off Bayocean before the sea took them. The resulting Grant's Getaways: Bayocean was shown during KGW newscasts on June 26, but can be viewed online at Travel Oregon. The show will be one of four segments in a dedicated half-hour Grant's Getaways program in the fall. 

A week earlier Grant had asked me to set this up, after hearing about Bayocean from mutual friend Don Best. With the help of Sarah MacDonald (daughter of Bayocean alumni Perry Reeder) and Charles Ansorge (President of the Cape Meares Community Association), I managed to pull it off. Don couldn't join us because he was taking advantage of a sunny day with a minus 1.4 tide to take aerial photographs of Tillamook Bay - including a particularly dramatic one of Bayocean. Don provided some of the photographs Jeff and Grant put into the show. Tom Olsen provided them a copy of the DVD he produced for the Port of Garibaldi (see Videos of Bayocean History) which they used to powerful effect. 

Left to right: Barbara Bennett, David Bennett, Grant McOmie, Kevin Bennett, 

Harold Bennett, Perry Reeder, and Sarah MacDonald 

Perry Reeder's maps of  Bayocean 

Our day started at the schoolhouse, which Charles was kind enough to open ahead of time. Each Bayocean school alumnus arrived with an interested son or daughter: Perry and his daughter Sarah; Barbara Bennett and her son David; and Harold Bennett and his son Kevin (wife/mother MerryAnn bolted before the cameras came out). Perry and Sarah laid out some maps on a table. Barbara spread out some photos on another. The stories soon began. Everyone had warmed to the occasion by the time Grant and Jeff arrived. Charles greeted them on behalf of the CMCA and left to teach an (online) university class. 

Grant McOmie interviewing Barbara Bennett
with Jeff Kastner recording it all

Perry Reeder describes  the Bayocean that once was,
while standing where kids waited for the school bus:
across from Mitchell's store on the south side of 12th.

Watching Grant, it's easy to see how he gets people to feel comfortable and open up: he's an engaging fellow who is genuinely interested in what folks have to say. Barbara, Harold, and Perry seemed to enjoy telling their stories, and the telling helped us all imagine the Bayocean they once knew. Visiting the "townsite" that Perry and Sarah set up on the spit really got Harold and Perry going. 

The last part of the day was spent visiting the Pagoda house(s) and two others moved to Bayocean that are still standing. I showed them the house that was built using wood salvaged from the Natatorium that I'll post on in the future. I had tried to stay off-camera all day but got tagged at the end because all the more interesting folks had left. Grant's Getaway: Bayocean is a pleasure to watch despite that. 

Barbara Bennett

Since I've used Barbara Bennett as a source in past posts, and likely will in the future, I thought it would be good to let readers get to know her better.

Barbara moved to the village of Cape Meares in 1943 with her parents, Milton and Edith Schlegel, and brothers Jerry and Jim. The original Bayocean Park plat included Cape Meares (see Cape Meares and Bayocean) so the children all went to Bayocean School together. The schoolhouse was actually closer to Cape Meares than central Bayocean. 

Barbara had fifteen classmates during her seventh and eighth grade years at Bayocean School. They included her older brother Jerry, Perry Reeder, Ernest Knutson, and the Bennett siblings Harold, Rosemarie, and James, and the Sherwood siblings. She graduated eight grade with Ernest Knutson in 1945, attended ninth through twelfth grades at Tillamook Junior High School, and graduated in 1949. 

Soon after graduation, Barbara married her classmate James Bennett, which is why she stayed in Cape Meares when her family moved to Forest Grove. Jim and Barbara moved to Fort Ord where he served as a military policeman until they returned to Cape Meares in 1954. Since then Barbara has never left. She worked in the Tillamook Cheese Factory for many years and raised her family. 

Jim was interviewed in a video by Rick Dancer called "Oregon Ghost Towns: Bay Ocean, the saddest story of all" in 2005. Jim died nine years later. His father Lewis Bennett was the primary source of information for the Webbers (who spelled his name incorrectly as "Louis" ) in  Bayocean: The Oregon Town that Fell Into the Sea. Jim's brother Harold still lives in the Cape Meares home their father remodeled after moving there from Bayocean. 

I am sorry to report that Barbara died on April 7, 2019. A nice obituary ran in the Tillamook Headlight-Herald.