I found a terrific post authored by Finn J.D. John that appeared on Offbeat Oregon History, February 25, 2009.
After you've finished reading it, and if you're curious and like to hike, there are two wonderful hikes you can take at what was once Bayocean. You can take the easier four mile hike, or if you want a real workout you can opt for the eight mile hike.
You should spot many different birds on either of these hikes, and what I like best about them is that they are both loop trails.
It feels a little eerie at Bayocean, a ghost town where even the buildings are only shadows! It's a lonely hike; in all the times my husband and I have gone there, we never ran into any living people.
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Bayocean: The town that paid for its own doom
Town paid to build jetty that changed the ocean's currents, washed it away; the town slid into the sea, house by house.
By Finn J.D. John — February 25, 2009
Between Tillamook Bay and the sea there’s a narrow, sandy
peninsula where, 100 years ago, a town stood. Not just any town – one
of the biggest ones on the Oregon Coast. With a municipal swimming hall
full of warm saltwater and a surf generator.
The reason it’s gone today? Because the residents paid to
build a jetty to make their steamship journey smoother. The jetty
changed the ocean currents, and the ocean washed the town away. The
residents had paid for their own destruction.
Bayocean got its start in 1906 when a real estate
developer named T.B. Potter got hold of it and platted the town. Potter
thought big. Over the next few years, he sold off 1,600 lots and built a
large hotel, a dance hall and that swimming hall – a mammoth structure
right by the beach, so residents could choose between cold surf and
warm.
Potter thought big, but his actual execution was more of a
mid-size. He promptly installed a telephone network in Bayocean, which
worked great for local calls across town – but wasn’t linked to the
outside world. Getting fresh water was a hassle, too; Potter built a
pipeline, but didn’t put a booster pump on it, so the water pressure was
actually so low that sometimes water would not reach some of the lots.
He also installed streets made of concrete rather than dirt or sand,
but it didn’t matter much; no road was built to the “mainland” until
the 1920s, so most residents didn’t bother with cars. Most folks
arrived on Potter’s steamship, the S.S. Bayocean, which made a
three-day journey from the town to Portland and a three-day trip back,
once a week.
The steamer trip was a terrifying ordeal sometimes, though. Of
course, it would have to cross the Columbia River bar up at Astoria –
the bar’s dangers are still legendary – and thread the needle into the
unprotected mouth of Tillamook Bay. This last could be more scary than
the bar crossing, which at least could be kept reasonably smooth by not
crossing when the tide was coming in.
Residents started clamoring for a protective jetty. The
Army Corps of Engineers studied the place and told them they needed two
jetties, one on each side of the mouth of the bay, and it would cost
$2.2 million – half of which would have to come from local residents.
The residents couldn’t afford to do that, so they proposed
a single jetty. A little over $800,000 later, it was done, and
Bayocean’s soon-to-be-ex-homeowners paid half.
Each household had ponied up roughly $450 – which, in
1917, was enough to buy one and a half brand-new Ford Model Ts. And
for a while, things were great. The steamship ride was much more
pleasant without coming across the open ocean.
But then something odd started happening. Bayocean’s broad sandy
beach started getting a little less broad. Then it started getting a
lot less broad.
Finally, in 1932, waves from a massive storm crossed the beach and destroyed the massive seaside swimming hall.
From there, it got worse and worse. The hotel started
falling, room by room, into the sea. Each winter, the sea got further
in. By 1938, 59 homes were gone.
Finally, in the early 1950s, the sea breached the spit and
rushed into Tillamook Bay, turning Bayocean into an island. Instantly,
a multi-million-dollar oyster fishery was ruined, a thousand acres of
oyster beds buried in sand. Salinity in the bay surged. The estuary’s
fisheries started to collapse.
The government sprang into action, building a riprap
seawall across the gap to keep the sea out. Some time after that, in
the early 1970s, the second jetty was added; it solved the problem with
the currents, and the sand started building itself back up on the spit.
But it was too late for Bayocean. By then, the entire town was gone.
(Sources: Webber, Bert & al. Bayocean: The Oregon Town that Fell into the Sea. Central Point, OR: Webb Research Group, 1989; Sullivan, William L. Hiking Oregon’s History. Eugene, OR: Navillus, 2006)
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| A view from the hotel that once existed in Bayocean. | | | | |
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| The dance hall (foreground) and natatorium once located in Bayocean. |
