Guardians of the Coast The USS Shark was among a long line of ill-fated ships that perished along Oregon’s rugged North Coast. Recognizing the need for a more formalized network of aids to navigation, the U.S. Lighthouse Board came into being in 1852. It didn’t take long before the busy maritime traffic and challenging conditions along Oregon’s coast caught the board’s attention. By the 1860s, it proposed a lighthouse atop the lofty promontory of Tillamook Head, and Congress began appropriating land for its construction. The federal government eventually decided that an offshore lighthouse made more sense than the high headland sometimes shrouded in fog. It erected the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse on a 1-acre slab of basalt about a mile offshore — an immensely challenging and expensive project that took a year and a half to build. Completed in 1881, “Tilly” soon became known as “Terrible Tilly” by its lightkeepers living and working in such a precarious storm-battered location. It also soon became the nation’s most expensive lighthouse to operate. Tilly was eventually decommissioned in 1957 in favor of a more cost-effective whistle buoy. The lighthouse fell into private hands and even did a stint as a columbarium, housing cremation urns. The lonely, weather-beaten lighthouse still stands, visible from Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park. Today nesting shorebirds and resting sea lions are the only inhabitants of this scenic slab of rock, part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. The lighthouse land acquired on Tillamook Head, meanwhile, stayed in federal hands. It was eventually pressed into military service during World War II for a radar installation, serviced by a series of roads used by Ecola State Park visitors today. Hikers can reach the old WWII concrete bunker on the park’s Tillamook Head Trail, a 1.8-mile trek north through lush spruce and hemlock forest from the Indian Beach parking lot. The other reward is a spectacular cliff-top view 750 feet above the Pacific. Whether hiking its trails, strolling its beaches or exploring its downtown streets, visitors will discover Cannon Beach’s engaging history and heritage at every turn. FROM FAR LEFT: JONI KABANA / TRAVEL OREGON; COURTESY OF BRENT LAWRENCE / USFWS The Cannons of Cannon Beach Along with that whale, a famous shark also earned a chapter in Cannon Beach history — specifically the USS Shark, a storied naval schooner that gave Cannon Beach its name. Launched in 1821, the Shark quickly built up quite a legacy. The ship and its crew claimed Key West for the United States, transported John James Audubon for wildlife study, suppressed the African slave trade in the West Indies, fought pirates and sailed across the Atlantic to defend American interests in the Mediterranean. In 1839 the USS Shark crossed the pond again to become the first U.S. Navy warship to pass through the Strait of Magellan for duty in the Pacific. Returning from an exploratory survey up the Columbia River, the Shark met up with the full fury of the infamous Columbia River Bar. Strong winds, high seas, and a maelstrom of currents and tides at the river’s mouth sent the Shark into the shoals, where it foundered and sank in September 1846. The crew was saved and, as it turns out, so were some of its cannons. Sightings of the USS Shark cannons in the surf and sand swirled around for years, enough for an early settler to name the area Cannon Beach in 1891. One finally reappeared in the waters of Arch Cape Creek to great excitement in 1898; two more emerged out of the sand more than a century later, in 2008. Today visitors can view the first one at the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum, where a permanent exhibit shares the illustrious story of the USS Shark and its elusive Cannon Beach cannons. Cannon Beach History Center and Museum Steller sea lions at Tillamook Rock Lighthouse 6 Cannon Beach Visitor Guide
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