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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2018
Reserve: ‘What do people want these roads to do for them?’
Continued from Page 1A
Generating revenue has
never been the main priority of
the reserve, but the costs asso-
ciated with maintenance may
not make it a sustainable ven-
ture, Barnes said.
“If we have to do extensive
road rehab every time we do
this, we’re not going to break
even,” Barnes said. “We’re
going to have to subsidize
that.”
If the report suggests a lot
of major modifications are
necessary, the community has
a few options.
Thinning could be taken
out of the plan as a recommen-
dation altogether, and the roads
decommissioned, Barnes said.
The downside would be the
city would no longer be able
to expect any kind of revenue
from the reserve, meaning any
restoration will have to be paid
with grants or the general fund.
The ultimate goal of restoring
the forest would still evolve
naturally, Barnes said, but not
as quickly.
The community could
also still have thinning opera-
tions, but leave the logs in the
reserve for habitat restoration
rather than revenue, Sims said.
Roads would not have to be
maintained to support logging
trucks.
There are benefits to hav-
ing less disturbance in a water-
shed, but he also has seen
how thinning has encouraged
new growth, Sims said. Keep-
ing woody debris within the
reserve could also aid in ongo-
ing salmon habitat restoration
efforts.
“You do have an impact,”
Sims said. “But it’s also more
about the perception of what
that is. People are shocked by
it, but in a couple of years it
looks more natural.”
This summer, Sims will
continue evaluating roads
throughout the reserve to deter-
mine which need major, minor
or no maintenance to support
any future activity — whether
that be a logging truck or a
hiker. He expects the report to
be finished by September, and
hopes it will inform the com-
mittee in whatever direction is
chosen.
“A lot of it will come down
to: What do people want these
roads to do for them?” Sims
said. “We’ll take a fresh look
at all of it, to see if the commu-
nity is excited about another
thinning project.”
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Roads are being evaluated in the Ecola Creek Forest Reserve as a part of the five-year review of the property.
Beeswax: Group last searched for shipwreck last summer
Continued from Page 1A
Oregon Historical Society
Researchers have linked the markings from blocks of
beeswax found near Manzanita to shippers in the Philip-
pines that were part of the Spanish galleon trade across
the Pacific Ocean.
had a complete manifest of the
estimated 235 passengers and
crew aboard the ship.
Researchers also found a
partial cargo manifest, includ-
ing 2.5 tons of mercury that
may help with identification
of the wreck, and were able
to link the markings on some
of the beeswax blocks found
in Oregon to shippers in the
Philippines part of the galleon
trade.
“I hope that our archival
research will help the archae-
ological team in locating the
wreck,” La Follette said. “I
would also like other people to
do genealogical research of the
people on the passenger and
crew list.”
Other articles in the quar-
terly recap the Santo Cristo de
Burgos’ crew and cargo, along
with the Spanish galleon trade
across the Pacific Ocean and
the tradition of treasure hunt-
ing around Neahkahnie Moun-
tain and the Nehalem Spit.
One recaps the research by
the Beeswax Wreck Project,
started in 2006 to ascertain the
nationality, port of origin, des-
tination, name and final resting
place of the ship.
The Beeswax Wreck Proj-
ect has since been folded into
the Maritime Archaeological
Society, a nonprofit based in
Astoria and focused on doc-
umenting shipwrecks in the
Pacific Northwest. The group
last searched for the shipwreck
last summer, deploying side-
scan sonar and an underwa-
ter robot to explore rocky out-
croppings along Oswald West
State Park.
Scott
Williams,
lead
researcher with the Beeswax
project, said the archaeolog-
ical society is hampered by a
lack of money for the expen-
sive underwater archaeology
equipment. The group will
dive near the Beeswax search
area this summer in search
of an unrelated anchor chain,
but needs a new magnetome-
ter to help find metal deposits
from artifacts such as the can-
nons the Santo Cristo de Bur-
gos would have been carrying,
he said.
But Williams is excited
about the potential interest La
Follette’s work could generate.
“I think it kind of kicks it
up to another level of scholar-
ship,” he said. “Having this out
will really raise awareness.”
La Follette, who is active
with the Oregon Coast Alli-
ance, will present her team’s
findings July 8 at the Oregon
Historical Society in Port-
land. Copies of the Oregon
Historical Quarterly are avail-
able at the historical soci-
ety’s museum store, and start-
ing next week at the Columbia
River Maritime Museum.
D.B. Cooper: ‘I want out of the system’
Continued from Page 1A
Colbert claims the letter,
part of a larger FOIA docu-
ment dump, proves that his
No. 1 Cooper candidate —
Robert Wesley Rackstraw, an
Army paratrooper and ex-con-
vict now living in the San
Diego area — is the infamous
airborne bandit. Rackstraw
was once a person of interest
to the FBI before the bureau
cleared him.
In the typed, two-para-
graph letter, allegedly writ-
ten from the Bahamas to “let
you know I am not dead but
really alive,” the writer repeats
a couple of odd phrases, their
final iterations appearing in the
sentences:
“I want out of the system
and saw a way through good
ole Unk,” (that is, Uncle Sam);
and “And please tell the lackey
cops D.B. Cooper is not my
real name.”
Rick Sherwood, a member
of Colbert’s investigative team
and an Army Security Agency
veteran who briefly supervised
Rackstraw in Vietnam, had a
theory: Perhaps the repetition
signaled Army “code-speak,”
used by the military to locate
enemy troops during the war.
Code cracked
The decoded results:
“through good ole Unk”
becomes “by skyjacking a jet
plane” — and “And please tell
the lackey cops” becomes “I
am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw.”
When Colbert asked his
“cold case” team to review
Sherwood’s work, “They said,
‘Uh, this is a confession.’”
“It’s stunning,” Colbert
said. “I mean, he not only
admits he’s Cooper, he says he
did it.”
Sherwood explained the
code-breaking process, which
is copyrighted, to The Daily
Astorian off the record. His
results were checked by
another member of Colbert’s
team, retired Lt. Col. Ken
Overturf, using an old Army
code book.
Earlier this year, Sher-
wood deciphered codes from
a court-released D.B. Cooper
letter sent to the Seattle Times,
New York Times, Los Ange-
les Times and Washington
Post. On each carbon copy —
three of which were scooped
up by the FBI before they
were printed — was a series of
numbers and alphabetical let-
ters. It’s the same code used in
the new Oregonian letter.
When decrypted, the char-
acters point to the three mili-
tary units Rackstraw served
in, two of them top secret
until the 1980s. He is the only
man known to have served in
all three units, a fact Colbert
called “the smoking gun.”
Overturf said in an email:
“I do not believe that anyone
else could possibly fit the pro-
file of these three units.”
Because using the code
would require someone with
knowledge of the coding pro-
cess, and the intellect to apply
them in the D.B. Cooper let-
ters, “the investigative path
again leads directly back to
Rackstraw,” he wrote.
Rackstraw could not
immediately be reached for
comment.
Norman de Winter
Colbert argues that, in
the months leading up to the
hijacking, Rackstraw passed
through the Astoria area under
the alias “Norman de Win-
ter,” claiming to be a moneyed
Swiss baron. The bizarre epi-
sode remains part of the col-
lective memory of people who
lived on the North Coast at the
time.
De Winter got friendly with
townsfolk, took their food and
money, promised them a free
trip to his lodge in Switzer-
land for the Christmas hol-
iday — and suddenly van-
ished. A short time later, de
Winter allegedly resurfaced in
Corvallis.
Then, on Nov. 24, 1971, a
dark-suited, cigarette-smok-
ing man wearing sunglasses
and using the name “Dan Coo-
per” (misreported as “D.B.
Cooper”) boarded a North-
west Orient flight from Port-
land to Seattle. He told the
stewardess his briefcase con-
tained a bomb, and demanded
cash and some parachutes
after the passengers deplaned
at their destination.
He ordered the crew to fly
him to Mexico and, some-
where over the Oregon-Wash-
ington state border, he sky-
dived into the dark wilderness,
the money fastened to his
body. He was never caught,
and the identity of the thief
has been a source of relent-
less, often far-fetched specu-
lation. The incident remains
the only unsolved skyjacking
in U.S. history.
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‘I’d be extremely
nervous’
When the de Winter/Rack-
straw/Cooper
connection
came up, some people won-
dered whether the Astoria vis-
itor’s name is a nod to Dick
Winter, the parachuting hero
of World War II’s Normandy
invasion. No photo of de Win-
ter has been found.
Rackstraw is one of many
names offered up over the
years from the “Cooperite”
community. Joseph Lakich
and Walter Reca, military vet-
erans who both died in recent
years, are among the latest
Cooper contenders.
Colbert, the author of “The
Last Master Outlaw,” has been
building a cumulative case for
Rackstraw’s guilt over several
years. He accuses the FBI,
which closed the D.B. Coo-
per case in 2016, of ignor-
ing his evidence. The agency
announced it will not accept
new evidence except the sto-
len money or parachute.
In the past, Rackstraw has
shrugged off the idea that he’s
Cooper, though he has repeat-
edly hinted in interviews with
journalists that he could be
the man after all. He has dis-
missed and disparaged Col-
bert’s work.
With this latest revelation,
however, Sherwood imagines
Rackstraw’s evasions will
become harder to sustain.
“If I was Robert Rack-
straw, I’d be extremely ner-
vous,” Sherwood said.
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as well as vocal selections from Moana, The Greatest Showman, the
Broadway musical Hamilton, military marches and patriotic selections.
3 p.m. Saturday, July 7, 2018
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