Bayocean Losses Tallied

At one time or another, the resort town of Bayocean included everything listed below, as chronicled in Bayocean: Atlantis of Oregon. Absolutely nothing remains. 

59 Residences (not all stood at the same time; the number peaked at 36 in 1939):

30 slid to the sea, undercut by erosion 

  8 were deconstructed 

  6 were moved off the spit before it became an island in 1952

  4 burned down for lack of a fire department

  9 were burned, and buried to enable construction of the breakwater  that reconnected the island to Cape Meares in 1956

  2 had unknown fates 

Rock crusher: used to manufacture 3.5 miles of concrete streets  and sidewalks along High Terrace and Twelfth Avenues                Two schoolhouses

Machine shop 

Warehouses: at least two; many untallied outbuildings 

Kaaran Ann Kottages: a duplex

Cottage Park: 42 rental cottages (the number and style varied) 

Annex: 38 guest rooms and a restaurant

Amusement Pavilion: a three-sided structure including a bowling alley, billiard room, ice cream parlor, game room, and curio shop

Tennis courts

Bayside Inn: 24 guest rooms and a restaurant 

Natatorium

Three dance halls: at different times, the last put up by Reed College students when they ran the resort in 1921

The Mitchell: a mercantile with at least three apartments upstairs

Pier: one quarter mile long, with a harbor for ocean-going ships

Water lines: run from Coleman Creek on Cape Meares

Sewer lines: run along High Terrace and Twelfth Avenues 

6-7 million cubic yards of sand: which would have filled a cube 545’ to  573’ on each side, roughly two Portland city blocks and the street between

To find other articles of interest, see the Index or scroll through them on the Home page. 

Air Force Survival Training on Bayocean

On April 8, 2015, I was looking for a cadastral survey monument (see Rewitness Card #56 ) at the north end of Bayocean when I noticed red-striped plastic ribbons hanging from tree limbs. Following the flags from the ocean side to the bay side, I could not figure out their purpose. Cape Meares resident Robert (Ollie) Ollikainen later suggested they play a role in Air Force survival training held on the spit periodically. 

A month later, I learned that the Air Force had a contract with the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department to hold survival training each spring and fall and found a CoastWatch report dated 9/13/03 by YaakovM that said:

On this Sunday through Thursday, Sept. 18th, the US Air   Force was conducting coastal survival training exercises. Saw four young soldiers building shelters out of driftwood, putting up rescue flags, and otherwise going through assigned tasks. On bay side of the spit, I saw several trucks, a bus, many tents, and equipment for the exercise noted above. The soldiers appeared to be doing no damage to the beach area and, from what I later learned, completely clean up the area when they're through.

When I called Paul Levesque, Chief of Staff for the Tillamook County Board of Commissioners, about this he said the Air Force notifies him when the training is scheduled, but it's not made public to avoid interference by observers because these are flight crews learning to hide behind enemy lines if their planes go down. This made me wonder if eyes were observing me while I was bushwhacking across the spit back in April. Perhaps I had inadvertently become part of their training. If so, they did well.

I happened upon the training in person while picking up garbage for SOLV on September 21st, 2019. A male soldier (one was female) inflating rafts at Crab Harbor waved permission to take photos. Their camp was at Kincheloe Point was empty. There were several boats near the end of the south jetty but I couldn't see what they were doing. Perhaps eyes hidden in the beach grass were observing me again. 

See the Index page to find more articles to read. 

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.  

Farley Reset

In Stand Under Bayocean Hotel Annex's Chimney, I used datasheets for two survey control stations on Bayocean that no longer exist in order to pinpoint where the Hotel Bayocean Annex and the Bayside Inn had been located on today’s landscape. Three other stations have also disappeared. Only one station, maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remains. The Farley Reset datasheet says it was first established in 1935. Like Bayocean's initial point, the original monument has been replaced with a  bronze disc. But it still has historical significance, so I wanted to find it. On October 30, 2016 my bushwhacking buddy Eleanor Culhane joined me in the search.

Following datasheet directions we hiked 2.5 miles north from the gate at the Bayocean parking lot, and then west on a game trail to the top of a high dune just a few hundred feet away. In 1975 the dune was still described as being covered with short vegetation. Now the trees and brush are so thick that I’d hiked past it many times without knowing it was there. When Eleanor found Reference Mark No. 3 (another bronze disc) near the end of the trail at the top, we knew we were close. We had to do a little bushwhacking, but nothing like that required to reach Bayocean’s highest point. An orange, plastic witness post stood out from the greenery, but that was different than described in the last datasheet update, and the station disc was not two feet east of it, so that threw us off for a bit. But after clearing a circle all the way around the the post we found the disc two feet north of it.

Why was it there? David Moore, a surveyor from Albany, Oregon, said stations like this were set up all along the coast, and for miles inland, after average sea levels were determined in 1927. They were used by land surveyors to calibrate their equipment for elevation, after checking for updates. Though latitude and longitude were added to the datasheets, surveyors used other monuments to calibrate for that. This dune was an obvious choice for a station because it was high and stable. A hydro signal originally placed next to it must have have been visible from Tillamook Bay before trees obstructed its view. 

Barview Jetty image no. 57, Tillamook County Pioneer Museum

Why the name Farley? Captain Robert Farley was in charge of the first Coast Guard Lifesaving Station at Tillamook Bay from its beginning in 1908 until his retirement in 1935. Ironically, Captain Farley’s own home at Barview was a casualty of coastal erosion in 1915, soon after construction on the north jetty began.

Bayocean Road Hard To Build AND Keep Open

The Oregon coast was hit hard over the last couple weeks by record rainfall and strong winds, causing temporary isolation of many communities in Tillamook County due to road closures. Cape Meares was one of them. Bayocean Road, the only way in and out of the community, was flooded in some locations, covered with debris from several landslides, and undermined by a culvert failure. Residents were locked in for short periods on a couple occassions. Charles Ansorge, President of the Cape Meares Community Association, wrote a report and posted photos at their website, and provided additional information in this post. 

Photo by Charles Ansorge

Cape Meares Loop Road had been an alternative route to the south, through Oceanside, Happy Camp, and Netarts, but it was closed by landslides north of the road to the lighthouse in 2013. When a failed culvert blocked the Loop Road between Oceanside and Happy Camp, Tillamook County provided 24-hour pilot service through the landslide-buckled sections for three days so that Oceanside residents had a way in and out. By then Bayocean Road had been cleared. 

In her December 16, 2015, Cape Meares Fencepost, long-time resident Barbara Bennett recalled how grateful she and her neighbors were when the Cape Meares Loop Road was completed, because they then had a way out when Bayocean Road was closed by landslides. This would occur regularly and last for days at a time. Oceanside residents were equally pleased to have another way out when the loop closed south of them. Efforts have been made to acquire state and/or federal funding to repair it, so far without success.

Photo from Tillamook County Pioneer Museum,
looking west, with Tillamook Bay on the right. 

The original construction of Bayocean Road required some sections to be cut out of the hillside. In other places, pilings had to be driven into Tillamook Bay and land backfilled behind them. This is why it took 20 years for a county road to reach Bayocean Park. Then the challenge became keeping it open. When storms hit, flooding from the bay, and slides from the rain-soaked hillside, slam Bayocean Road from both sides. Bayocean alumni like Perry Reeder tell stories of extended periods when heavy equipment, like tractors and bulldozers, were used to pull cars through the mess. On December 28, 1931, the Oregonian reported a slide dumping 30,000 cubic yards at Biggs (now Pincher) Point, bringing the point home with: "A steam shovel was buried by the avalanche." They hoped to open the road (evidently with a spare steam shovel) in four days. 

Photo by Charles Ansorge

Recent high winds also blew the top off the Bayocean interpretive sign. Fortunately, the remaining section tells the story. Though much of the text is incorrect, the sign is historic in its own right. It's a good idea to check Tillamook County Road Status before traveling during the winter to Bayocean Spit or any of the communities around Cape Meares. You can also sign up for road closure notices, weather advisories, and other emergency announcements about Tillamook County at Nixle. 

Tillamook Bay Run

The 14th annual Tillamook Bay Run starts 10 AM, Saturday, August 15. Both the 10k and 5k routes begin on the ocean side of Bayocean Spit and cross over to return on the bay side. With both gravel and sand to contend with, rugged shoes are a must. For more information and/or to register go to http://bayrun.org. If you were looking for a nice, quiet day on the spit, you might want to choose a different one.

Update: unfortunately I've not been able to find results or an event report anywhere online. What's posted at the organization's web site is for the previous year, so take a look in 11 months. 

Grant McOmie Cockle Clamming at Bayocean

Jeff Kastner shows how it's done

A couple of weeks ago Grant McComie featured Bayocean's history. In this episode, he covers cockle clamming in Tillamook Bay, along the spit's eastern shore. Grant also learns how to cook and feast on the cockles, and it appears he's a good student.  See the video, read the story, and enjoy some great photos by Jeff Kastner at Grants Getaways: Cockle Clamming. 

Photo by Jeff Kastner of cockle raking in Tillamook Bay, just off the east shore of Bayocean, with Garibaldi in the background

Walking Past The Pier

Letter from Potter to Beebe  at
Tillamook County Pioneer Museum

Looking at photographs of the Bayocean pier, where boats docked in Tillamook Bay, you can see that it was quite long. I wanted to know exactly how long, to see if I crossed the spot where it would have been hiking on Dike Road now. Luckily, the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum provided the answer, by way of a letter in their collection that T.B. Potter wrote to Charles Bebee in 1911 saying the pier was 1400 feet long, just over a 1/4 mile. 

The pier was an extension of 12th Avenue, which stopped at Bay Street. The Bayside Inn was on the southeast corner of that intersection. If you were arriving by boat, you could just walk off the pier and check-in. Tillamook County Tax Map 1N1031D shows Dike Road 500' east of that intersection, so the pier would have extended 900' past the road into Tillamook Bay, nearly out to the oyster beds. 

Photo from Tillamook County Pioneer Museum

Where the pier would have crossed Dike Road is about 1/2 mile north of the parking lot gate. It's close to a sandy spot on the west side of Dike Road.  If you have a GPS reader it will be at latitude 45.527 (since the dock was pretty wide we don't need to go beyond three decimal points). When you get there, stop for a moment and imagine hiking out to watch the "dinky" railroad engine unload construction materials from a barge.

Cassin’s Auklets Wreck Hits Bayocean

This winter tens of thousands of dead Cassin's Auklets have appeared on beaches all along the Pacific Coast, 10 to 100 times normal rates, according to the University of Washington report "Cassin's Auklet North Pacific Winter Wreck 2014-2015". Volunteers with COASST and CoastWatch have been collecting and counting specimens, many of which were autopsied to determine cause of death. Audubon Magazine's "Lost at Sea: Starving Birds in a Warming World" agrees with UW and others that the dead birds are juveniles who starved for reasons associated with global warming.



Photo by D. Derickson of COASST












Unfortunately, Bayocean participated in this "wreck". In a CoastWatch report on December 26, 2014, Cape Meares resident Olli Olikainen counted 126 dead auklets along Mile 289, which is at the northern end of the ocean side of the spit, and 121 dead auklets along Mile 286.  The Cape Meares Community Association web site lists others who helped out: Keith and Anita Johanson, BJ Byron, Kevin and Kathy Burke, Carolyn Olikainen, Wendy Kunkel, Dave Audet, John Harland, Ciel Downing, Rod Pelson, and Pete Steen. Thanks to all of you for doing this unpleasant but important work.

The good new is that Olli saw no dead birds on March 30, 2015 , just a few remaining bones and feathers. Hopefully all  seen on Bayocean in the future will be flying by like little tennis balls against the backdrop of a coastal sunset.



Photo by Jamie Chavez via Flickr Creative Commons

Photo by Julio Mulero via Flickr Creative Commons

 

Trail Signs

If you've hiked the signed trails on Bayocean you'll have noticed that the ones on the bay side are just off Dike Road, while the ones on the ocean side are not visible from the beach. Rather, they are posted where trees begin. I wondered if that was because they were installed before the south jetty was built and thus could be used to see how much sand accretion could be attributed to them. Since the Tillamook County Parks Department is in charge of trail maintenance, I called Director Del Schleichert to find out.

Del informed me that the signs were placed there in the early 2000s, just before he was hired. He said they were made of a weather-resistant, composite material by workers employed at a state correctional institution, with the date stamped on the back. I confirmed this during a hike on April 8, 2015. They were all stamped either June 2002 or  November 2001.

Signs are not placed on the foredunes because the sand is constantly shifting. Thus, any signs installed, or trails built, would require constant maintenance. Tillamook County just doesn't have the budget for that. Bayocean hiking enthusiasts have resolved the problem on their own by placing and maintaining tripods and posts with colored strings to let folks know where they need to leave the beach. Once on the foredune, you can see the trails sign or footprints leading to them.  On behalf of those of us who benefit from those tripods, I'd like to thank those who set them up.

As to accretion of sand attributable to the south jetty, that can be seen in aerial photographs and sketches drawn by the Corps of Engineers. Time-lapse photo overlays at Google Earth show very little change since 1994.

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.

Bayocean by Foot, Bicycle, and Horseback

Motor vehicles are not allowed on Bayocean Spit, except for maintenance and official business for those who have keys to get through the gates. If you want to enjoy the wonders of Bayocean it has to be without the aid of a motor.


View of Tillamook Bay midway along Dike Rd, by Jerry Sutherland

Follow the Dike Road north from the parking lot all the way out the south jetty and you will have traveled about 4.5 miles. If instead, you take the trail west from the parking lot across the peninsula to the ocean side and follow the beach out to the jetty it's about 3.5 miles. 



View of Pacific Ocean from South Jetty, by Jerry Sutherland

So, a round trip from the parking lot to the jetty can range from 7 to 9 miles. A steady but leisurely hike, with a break for lunch on the jetty, would take you four to five hours. Along the way you'll meet others packing fishing gear on their bikes, walking their dogs, riding horses, and taking photos. 


from Bobcat at Oregon Hikers

Many other routes of various durations are enabled by trails crossing the peninsula along its length. Wandering off-trail through the low dunes on the south end is not difficult, but once you pass the locked gate about a mile north of the parking lots it's another matter: wetlands cover the lowlands and dense brush covers the hills. But if you really like bushwhacking read Bayocean's Highest Point.

Online Bayocean field guides and maps are available in several places including Oregon Hikers and Every Trail. If you have dogs (on a leash, not chasing wildlife, of course) Ellen Morris Bishop features Bayocean in her Best Hikes With Dogs: Oregon. Bill Sullivan describes a route across the sand gap, between the forested hills, and adds a nice historical perspective in Hiking Oregon's History. 

The Tillamook County website and posted signs say that overnight camping is not allowed on Bayocean. Seeing evidence of these on hikes, and reading websites claiming the overnight camping prohibition only applies to vehicles, prompted me to get some clarification. So, I called Del Schleichert, Tillamook County Parks Director. He said that all of these activities are indeed prohibited and enforced. Overnight camping is illegal anywhere on the spit, whether you drive or backpack to the spot. You might not see the county sheriff or a deputy patrolling along Dike Road, but they can, and will if they suspect a violation is in progress. One of the main reasons for the prohibition is campfires. They could get out of control and wipe out Bayocean's forest before any fire trucks could get there.

February 26, 2022 update: JoAnne Woefle is now Parks Director. A porta-potty and garbage cans have been set up at the parking lot along with a $10 day-use fee station to help pay for their upkeep. 


Birds of Bayocean

Over 200 species of birds are listed at Bayocean hotspots, as shown on the map at eBird. The common murre is most frequently seen, followed by the northern pintail.



Common murre, by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.de

Tillamookbirder provides additional information that bird watchers might find useful,  including a calendar of events, best seasons and locations to view specific species, maps, and photo gallery.



 

A pair of northern pintails, by J.M.Garg, Wikimedia Commons

Bayocean's Highest Point

In Bayocean: The Oregon Town that Fell Into the Sea, Bert and Margie Webber wrote that the Bayocean Hotel was built at 140' above sea level, the highest point on the spit. However, an ad placed in the Oregonian on October 4, 1909, by the Potter-Chapin Realty Company, bragged of it standing at just 100'. A 1939 map drawn by the US Army Corps of (USACE) Engineers showed a 100' topographic line surrounding the hotel ruins. The Webbers must have seen brochures and other ads bragging that the hotel would be built on Bayocean's highest point and assumed that the USACE was referring to that spot when it said Bayocean's highest point was 140' in a 1940 study. Both were incorrect. 

In 1957, the USACE produced a more comprehensive map with the highest point shown at 154'. Studies on Bayocean, including some written by USACE, continued to use the 140' high point long after that report came out, likely because it was not widely distributed. I found this report at the National Archives in Seattle a few years after I hiked to the highest point myself, which was more fun.

Soon after Bayocean's history caught my interest, I began wondering what the elevation of the highest point was today, assuming it was lower than the hotel elevation. So I roamed Bayocean on Google Earth with my cursor noting the elevations shown in the margin. I found one at 126 feet and headed out there on December 16, 1914, with my friend Eleanor to find it. Later, looking at Google Earth again, I found several spots higher than 140' and tagged the highest one at 153' (the aerial view of it below is looking northwest towards Tillamook Bay). This made me realize that it's likely no one has ever been to Bayocean's highest point due to its remote location being a spot where nothing was ever built. With coordinates in hand (45.538290 -123.945063), Eleanor and I set again January 19, 2015. 



On a map, the shortest route to the high spot is a direct line west from Dike Road. We discovered that this would require hip boots we didn't have in order to get across a marsh, followed by a tough push up a steep incline through the nearly impenetrable brush. So we returned to the road and hiked south, then followed an established trail across the "sand gap" shown on maps, and headed uphill from a spot directly south of the high spot. We needed all of our tools (map, compass, GPS app) because the trees and other foliage was so thick in places we couldn't see far in any direction. At one point I entered info on my GPS app incorrectly, which forced us to backtrack. We tried using deer trails but they just led to dead ends where they bed down at night. Often we had to crawl under the brush to make headway. Luckily, when we got close the exact spot it was made obvious by a tall tree centered in a little knoll that stood above the surrounding turf. My GPS app registered 152'. We decided to try a shorter route back, hoping to avoid such extreme bushwhacking, by heading southeast on a ridgeline back to Dike Road. 

Eleanor at Bayocean's high spot

We figured going down a steep slope with no marsh at the bottom would be a snap. It wasn't. The brush was thicker there than anywhere else. Allowing our bodies to fall forward and down into the brush, picking ourselves back up and doing it again, was the most effective approach. I was impressed by Eleanor's sense of humor, fortitude, and willingness to put up with such a lousy trip leader.

Later, when I told Jonathan Allan, a coastal geomorphologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries what I'd learned, he said this highest point was shown on their LIDAR map at about 153'. Sea level rise over the last 60 years would have been enough to lower the elevation from above to below 153.5'. Rounding up and down does the rest in explaining how 154' in 1959 shrank to 153' today. 


Bayocean Eco-park Rejected By Tillamook County Planning Commission

A January 12, 2015 the Tillamook Headlight-Herald reported that at a public hearing on January 8th the Tillamook County Planning Commission denied the conditional use permit  requested by Dale Bernards (Bay Ocean LLC) to build an eco-resort on the 53 acres that he owns on Bayocean .The Tillamook County Planning Commission web page has an audio recording of the hearing and minutes of their November 13 meeting pertaining to the subject.

The Tillamook County Pioneer ran a story May 3, 2014 titled "Owner of proposed Bayocean eco-resort invites county to purchase land", which suggests Bernard's underlying purpose. It includes useful history on land ownership and usage on Bayocean. They later reported that Bernard had not filed an appeal of the decision by the January 22nd deadline, and that he was cryptic about future plans.

A 23-page Bayocean Park report submitted to Tillamook County on August 27th was produced by Stephens Planning and Design, and the students of a University of Oregon "Green Cities" course, instructed by Ric Stephens.  The report was comprehensive and and well produced, containing information of value to Bayocean aficionados far beyond the eco-resort plans: current and historic maps, a history of Bayocean, details regarding fauna and flora, photos, graphics, and references to sources of more information. Especially helpful in my own search to understand how the past and present of Bayocean comes together is a plat of the original town site laid over a modern bird's eye view of the spit. Unfortunately the URL is no longer valid. 

Residents of Cape Meares, the village at the south end of Bayocean, formed the Save Our Spit Committee after learning of the proposed eco-resort. They sponsored the survey referenced earlier and submitted 156 pages as "Exhibit C: Written Testimony Part 2 " to the Planning Commission. It includes a scrapbook of photos called "This is Bayocean Spit", reports on geology, wildlife, potential eco-resort impacts, early Native American use of Bayocean, and much more.
 

The Oregon Coast Alliance has a web page dedicated to campaign against Bernard's Bayocean development . Their testimony was "Exhibit C: Written Testimony Part 1" . At 224 pages it also contains a mass of information.

Controversial as it may be, the proposed Bayocean Park has produced a collection of information that should be of interest to anyone interested in Bayocean's history and geography.