The town that disappeared
It’s been 60 years since the final family moved away.
What’s become of Bayocean?
The town was created in 1906 on what now is called Bayocean Spit, a small stretch of land forming the south end of Tillamook Bay.
Perry Reeder’s family moved to Bayocean in 1944 when he was 6. His mother was the community’s postmistress.
Now, Reeder says, he can count on one hand the people still alive and living in Tillamook County who were raised in Bayocean.
“It was really a good place to grow up,” he recalls. The once-thriving community boasted hotels, motels, vacation rentals, natatorium (a building containing a swimming pool), dance hall, and miles of paved roads with a dozen different businesses.
At the corner of 12th and Bay Street, Reeder and about 20 other youngsters would wait to catch the school bus. “It was the heart of the town,” he says.
Not any longer. It’s all flat, open land. No houses. No buildings.
Just a single sign sticking up out of the ground that reads “Bayocean Townsight 1906-1971.”
Reed and his daughter, Sarah Macdonald, built and placed the sign as a reminder of what Bayocean used to be – and where it used to be.
“It’s the only place, after the county surveyor went out there, that we knew exactly where it was,” said Macdonald.
Her dad still owns property on the spit, along with 43 other titleholders.
“People don’t realize most of that out there is still private property,” Reed says, although the sign technically sits on county property.
The extinct town site has been rezoned for recreational management.
Reeder and his daughter would like to see some sort of trail put in, one that accurately depicts what happened to Bayocean … nicknamed “the town that fell in the ocean.”
In fact, “It never fell into the ocean,” Reeder stops to correct. “It slowly washed away over 30 years.”
Reeder is well versed in geology and regularly offers detailed accounts of what happened at Bayocean to geology students at Tillamook Bay Community College.
The peninsula’s history dates to the 1700s, he says. Maps show how stable the peninsula once was – until a north jetty was built on Tillamook Bay, a project that created what some might recall as the “Bayocean wars.”
Reeder says few are alive today who remember the contention that centered on construction of that jetty. “It caused a major disagreement around here,” he says, “that never let up until they built the south jetty.”
The north jetty was created to enable the entrance to Tillamook Bay to maintain a certain depth. Back then, oceangoing vessels ventured into Tillamook Bay for timber and cheese. Without the jetty’s protection, it could be a treacherous, often-fatal journey.
According to Reeder, who skippered a boat for the Army Corps of Engineers as the federal agency designed the jetty, the corps told county officials that two jetties on either side of the bay’s entrance needed to be built at the same time. But the county was unable – maybe unwilling – to pay for both. Only the north jetty was constructed.
What resulted was a change in the hydraulic motion of the bay – which began to erode the community of Bayocean.
“There wasn’t some big storm that came in and wiped the whole town into the ocean,” insists Reeder. “It was a slow, steady process.”
When the town’s road eventually washed out, the power and water lines went with it, he said.
Reeder moved to Cape Meares in 1950. But a few families stayed out in Bayocean, going to and from by boat.
Some of the houses came to be moved. Others were snagged by the ocean, among them the natatorium.
Still other structures were sacked when residents of Tillamook, Bay City and Garibaldi came over by boat and vandalized the town, taking the copper wire off the power lines and anything else they could carry with them.
After that, the town was condemned, Reeder said. It was burned to the ground. The Army Corps of Engineers covered it with a hydraulic fill.
And the land continued to erode, until the south jetty was built in the 1970s.
Bayocean's last house was washed away in 1960.
In 1971, the last remaining building – a garage – fell into the sea.
Thus, says Reeder, an extraordinary feature of the Oregon coast came to be forever lost.
The bay side of Bayocean had been covered in beautiful sugar sand, he says. The water would wash over the sand and warm itself in the sun, creating a great swimming hole.
“We called it ‘the plunge,’” Reeder remembers. “No other bay on the Oregon coast had that white, beautiful beach sand like we did.
“We really lost a unique feature you can’t find anywhere else.” Not to mention its shrimp and clam beds, he adds.
It was the destruction of these landmarks that spurred Reeder and his daughter to place the sign. The pair hopes it’s just the beginning.
“We don’t want the town lost and forgotten,” says Macdonald. “We want it passed on, what happened there.”
Reeder will be talking about Bayocean and sharing his memories during the community potluck Oct. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in the Oceanside Community Club.