The Town That Fell Into the Sea - A Visit to Bayocean, Oregon

hey everyone welcome to sidet track Adventures this is Steve so I had to make a quick trip to Oregon and while I was here there was a place that I really wanted to check out so I've driven over to the Oregon coast to a place where man took on nature and as most of us know in the end nature always wins so today I am at the bay ocean Peninsula and we're going to be taking a look at a town that was once called the Atlantic City of the Pacific the vanished town of bay ocean [Music] the temperatures are in the low 40s right now and it looks like some bad weather might be on the way but then again bad weather is fitting for the story of bay ocean the bay ocean Peninsula is near tillamuk which of course is known for its cheese about an hour and a half west of Portland in what probably should have been a war warning to the people trying to build Here Local tribes had a story that the peninsula was the phace of a Godlike being and occasionally when the God was bad the phus would be [Music] severed it was on this peninsula in front of us that in 1906 the town of bay ocean was formed I had mentioned they wanted to be like Atlantic City in the end they ended up more like Atlantis behind us is Cape MIRS that big rock in the ocean is Pyramid Rock and the smaller one is called Pillar Rock to continue with the story of bay ocean we're going to head a bit deeper onto the peninsula but to do that we have to go around what is Now cape mir's Lake the lake actually covers where part of the city once [Music] was the bay ocean Peninsula separates the Pacific Ocean and the tilamook bay the bay was once called murderer's Harbor it was given that name because a ship called the lady Washington captained by Robert gray arrived here on August 14th 1788 they anchored off the entrance to the bay near the North End of bay ocean Peninsula and there they were met by a canoe full of members of the tilamook tribe the meeting between the Americans and the natives got off to a good start with an exchange of gifts and while both groups kept their weapons ready Captain gray felt the relations were good enough to send a party ashore to gather wood and fresh [Music] water a couple of days later there was a Shore party that included a man named Marcus lus a cabin attendant from Africa's Cape Verde Island as the group was ashore a native grabbed lus cutless and ran off with it lus ran after him and when he caught the native several more tillamuk came out to assist their friend by plunging Spears into lopus hence the name murderer Harbor we've now made it to the parking area which is maybe a quarter of the way of the peninsula and there is a fee of $10 to park here we're walking on the Bay Side of the peninsula and there should be a trail leading into the interior somewhere up ahead it's amazing to think there was once a town right here a town with some major infrastructure here's a kiosk with information on Bay ocean and this is where we'll turn and take a walk through the town the kiosk has a really good map of the former Town site to kind of give an idea of what was once here and we're right about in the Middle where the dock was right now the trail is pretty overgrown here but I don't think we'll have to worry about snakes it's kind of amazing to think that 10 ft underneath us right now are paved roads a man named Thomas Irving Potter and his father Thomas Benton Potter founded Bay ocean in 1906 as they thought it was an ideal place for a resort being the closest beach to Portland which was by far the largest city in the area The Potters had Grand designs for the resort Town including a planned $250,000 Hotel it might be hard to believe looking around now but eventually Bay ocean would have a dance hall a hotel with an orchestra a 1,000 seat movie theater a shooting range a bowling alley tennis courts its own rail system and four miles of PVE streets all things that were very uncommon for towns of its size at the time by mid 1907 Bay ocean was being introduced to the world with full page ads and newspapers across the country the big problem still was getting here with no good roads or train service from outside the town and it took 3 days to get here from Portland by boat over Rough Waters in 1911 Potter had a yacht built to Ferry up to 50 passengers at a time from Portland greatly reducing the time but shortly after the yacht began running train service opened between Portland and tilamook which was a far easier Journey for people trying to get to Bay ocean while Bay ocean itself had paved roads the town wouldn't be connected to the rest of the state by good roads until the 1920s one of the things that was built here and probably the first thing that'll come up if you search for any historic photos of the town was the Bay ocean Natatorium a huge indoor swimming pool it opened in 1914 and had heated saltwater and a wave generator it was two stories high and took up five Oceanfront lots of course all of this required lots of money to maintain and they lost so much money on it it closed by 1927 1914 was really the height of bay Ocean and the beginning of the end a lot of the people who bought property here were speculators and the money The Potters were bringing in wasn't enough to keep up with the extravagant construction so when construction slowed the speculators got worried and stopped making payments in 1915 bosan went into receivership bad finances alone Aren't Enough enough to completely wipe a town from the face of the Earth but something else in 1914 really sealed the town's fate the mouth of the tilamook bay was rough for boats to get through so the solution was to build Jetties because of the cost though they opted to build only one Jetty this was a massive mistake as one Jetty is not better than zero Jetties and once the jetty was built on the North End Of The Bay entrance it helped direct the full Fury of the ocean right at the bay ocean Peninsula with the jetty directing waves right at Bay ocean the beaches began to erode in 1932 waves broke through and destroyed The Natatorium in 1952 the ocean cut through the peninsula completely turning Bay ocean into an island right now we should be right in the heart of town or above it at least and I think I see something up in front of us it looks like we've come across one of the markers showing where one of the buildings was so about 100 years ago we'd be standing inside the bay ocean hotel right now and and this is what it looks like [Music] today the first buildings along the ocean started to Disappear by the late 1920s but that didn't stop everyone from dreaming of bay ocean still becoming a resort town [Music] one of the earliest people to buy into Bay ocean was a man named Francis Mitchell and he was probably the last person to let the dream go he owned the General Store and promoted Bay ocean to every one he knew the town's demise must have broken him because in 1953 after his wife had a stroke he was judged insane and institutionalized he would go on to promote bosan to his fellow patients at the Oregon state hospital until he died in 1965 so it looks like we have another building marker over here let's take a look at it okay so speaking of Mr Mitchell looks like here's where the store [Music] was it looks like there's another post up here and the weather's starting to really get bad it's starting to rain okay this just says Bay ocean Town site and it looks like there's another one right over here and I'll get to why every everything is 10 ft under us in just a moment see what this [Music] is okay so this one says reader I believe this was a residence here it is just amazing how fast Nature has reclaimed this peninsula you would never believe there was a town here walking around [Music] when the peninsula was breached making Bay ocean an island it really disrupted the bay because there was now too little current to keep the channel clear at the entrance for ships to enter so in 1956 the Army Corps of Engineers built a break water to close the gap this created mir's Lake where we were earlier which covered a portion of where the town [Music] stood [Music] the bay ocean post office closed in 1953 and the last house here washed away in 1960 the last Building a garage fell into the ocean in 1971 also in 1971 a South Jetty was finally built and the peninsula Shoreline immediately started growing again and in turn began to bury the town site off in the distance there's pyramid and pillar rocks and right below us somewhere probably under the waves is where the natatorium would have been the concrete was left but it's long since been buried the cold rain is really starting to come down now and much like the citizens of bay ocean Mother Nature is telling us to get out of here so that's our look at the vanished town of bay ocean thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 341,359

Keywords: Bayocean Park, Bayocean Oregon, Oregon ghost towns, Tillamook, Cape Meares, Tillamook Bay, Oregon travel, Oregon history, oregon coast, oregon

Id: dl4MeF5pTOw

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 31 2024