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DailyAstorian.com //
145TH YEAR, NO. 258
Mental
health
experts
to advise
police
THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2018
ONE DOLLAR
Cannon Beach reviews
thinning in Ecola Creek reserve
County rolls out 24/7
crisis response
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
Police and sheriff’s deputies in Clatsop
County who have to make life-and-death
decisions about people in mental health cri-
sis will get some backup.
Mental health experts will be on call
around the clock to advise law enforcement
about whether someone who is acting out
can be contained or needs to go to the hos-
pital. The guidance could defuse often fran-
tic, emotional confrontations in the commu-
nity and avert unnecessary hospitalization or
arrest.
“We really want to do as much as we pos-
sibly can to keep people out of the emer-
gency room,” said Amy Baker, the executive
director of Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare,
the county’s mental health contractor.
See EXPERTS, Page 5A
D.B. Cooper
letter may
reveal ID of
skyjacker
Cracked code seems
to point to suspect
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
D.B. Cooper, the mysterious outlaw who
seized a commercial flight from Portland
to Seattle in 1971 and ransomed $200,000,
may have revealed his true identity, in mil-
itary code, in a letter an investigative team
believes came from the skyjacker.
The letter — an unpublished note to The
Oregonian dated March 28, 1972 — recently
came to light through a Freedom of Informa-
tion Act request filed by Thomas Colbert, a
private sleuth whose quest to find the crimi-
nal took him to the North Coast and became
the subject of a History documentary.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The Ecola Creek Forest Reserve near Cannon Beach remains off-limits to traffic.
Projects have not
been a significant
revenue source
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
C
ANNON BEACH — The parks
committee in Cannon Beach is
hoping a road evaluation in the
Ecola Creek Forest Reserve will help
determine whether thinning operations
should continue.
The evaluation is the beginning of a
larger, five-year review the committee
plans to do of the stewardship plan for the
1,040-acre parcel in the city’s watershed.
The public will be invited to suggest
updates to policies concerning manage-
ment and recreation access later this year.
The majority of the reserve was estab-
lished with a $4 million bond in 2010
with the goal to enhance forest health,
protect municipal water quality, enhance
salmon habitat and foster community
involvement.
While major changes have not been
proposed, several elements concerning
tree removal policies, signage and how
trails and roads should be maintained
have been points of discussion since the
plan was last adopted in 2013.
Committee members are looking to a
report on the state of the former logging
roads in the area — left over from when
the land was industrially harvested —
to decide whether thinning projects are
cost-effective.
Signs at the reserve clearly indicate restrictions within the protected area.
After the city acquired 800 acres from
the state Department of Forestry, Barry
Sims, a consultant from Trout Mountain
Forestry, recommended limited portions
of the forest that were dense with simi-
larly aged hemlock trees could be thinned
to improve forest health. Doing so would
encourage the development of new and
different trees hidden under the canopy of
these conifers.
Thinning projects were seen as a way
to achieve the plan’s goal of restoring the
forest, as well as a revenue source that
could be reinvested back into maintain-
ing the reserve.
But the policy is being questioned
after the city had to haul in loads of rock
five years ago to reinforce logging roads
after an unusually rainy summer made
them too unstable to safely use. After
having to pay fees to use neighboring log-
ging roads and road improvements, what
was estimated to be $20,000 in revenue
turned out to be closer to only $6,000,
according to Sims.
While the weather was an anomaly
and made the endeavor especially diffi-
cult, City Planner Mark Barnes said, the
city has not done work to maintain the
roads since.
“And they probably haven’t gotten
better,” he said.
See RESERVE, Page 7A
See D.B. COOPER, Page 7A
Historical magazine highlights Beeswax wreck
A local mystery
inspires author
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
The Beeswax shipwreck, a
local mystery born from blocks
of beeswax and shards of Chi-
nese porcelain found along the
shores of the Nehalem Spit,
is the subject of the Oregon
Historical Society’s newest
quarterly journal, “Oregon’s
Manila Galleon.”
The first article, by author
Cameron La Follette and a
team of archivists, takes a deep
dive into the Santo Cristo de
Burgos. The Spanish galleon
left Manila in 1693 loaded with
Asian trade goods headed for
Acapulco, Mexico. Research-
ers have long theorized the
ship, which disappeared, is the
wreck near Nehalem Spit.
La Follette had been search-
ing the Tillamook County Pio-
neer Museum’s website for
something else in 2015 when
she came across a talk about
the Beeswax wreck and looked
it up. She later connected with
the Beeswax Wreck Project, an
archaeological study of more
than 10 years looking for the
shipwreck.
Fascinated by the Span-
ish galleon trade and the peo-
ple who risked their lives to
bring goods across the Pacific
Ocean, she started an archi-
val study of records in Spain,
Mexico and the Philippines
related to the Santo Cristo de
Burgos.
“Archives often have the
most surprising things,” she
said. “Documents get depos-
ited there, and then all knowl-
edge gets lost over time.”
Her team’s research uncov-
ered information about the cap-
tain, Don Bernardo Iniguez del
Bayo, from the Basque region
of Spain. The General Archive
of the Indies in Seville, Spain,
See BEESWAX, Page 7A
A new
edition of
the Oregon
Historical
Quarterly
focuses
on the
Beeswax
shipwreck
thought to
be some-
where
near the
Nehalem
Spit and
Neahkahnie
Mountain.
Oregon
Historical
Society