B4
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 2021
Bayocean: Little evidence of the resort city remains
Continued from Page B1
One of the fi rst people on record to buy a
plot was Francis Drake Mitchell, who even-
tually became synonymous with the city. He
built a general store and the Bayocean Hotel.
His wife served as the city’s postmistress. The
couple was the last to leave the city when it
met its fate decades later.
Some minor coastal landscape erosion was
reported in Bayocean’s early years. Beach
erosion did not threaten the city in a dire man-
ner until 1914, when citizens decided to sta-
bilize and improve safety of the mouth of
the Tillamook Bay — thus sealing the city’s
demise.
At the time, Bayocean did not have a road
connecting to the mainland. Visitors instead
arrived by way of a steamship called the S.S.
Bayocean. The three-day trip became par-
ticularly unpleasant as the yacht neared the
unprotected mouth of Tillamook Bay and
contended with rough waves.
Citizens turned to the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers for a solution in the form of a jetty.
Usually, jetties are built in pairs to prevent
inadvertently creating damaging cross cur-
rents. Bayocean, however, could not aff ord
to fund both jetties. Despite the Corps’ strong
recommendations against doing so, the city
proceeded with building one jetty.
The 5,600-foot structure jutting out of the
north end of the bay was completed in 1917.
Losing coastline, fast
The singular jetty caused “drastic fl uc-
tuations of wave patterns” and dramatically
accelerated beach erosion. Historic accounts
detail residents’ reports of portions of their
front yards regularly washing out. Oth-
ers moved their summer cabins inland for
safety. One man lost his home completely. He
couldn’t fi nd the structure during a vacation
because it had fallen into the ocean.
In his research on Bayocean, Oregon histo-
rian Jerry Sutherland noted that the “destruc-
tion became a tourist attraction of its own” and
some vacationers would visit to take photos of
“houses hanging on the edge of the dune.”
Around 1928, the group managing the city
Tillamook County Pioneer Museum
The Bayocean Hotel was one of many
unusually extravagant tourist attractions for
Bayocean in its early years.
Tillamook County Pioneer Museum
Before a road from Tillamook to the peninsula was built in 1928, visitors arrived to Bayocean
by way of the S.S. Bayocean.
built a road to the spit from Tillamook.
Four years later, a large storm crossed the
beach and destroyed the city’s natatorium
wave pool. Around the same time, the Corps
began extending the jetty.
The additional length exacerbated the ero-
sion. By 1950, more than 20 homes had fallen
into the ocean. Bayocean’s landmass was
noticeably smaller. Often, the road onto the
spit would washout, temporarily stranding the
city from the mainland.
The Potters had long abandoned the resort
city to pursue other projects, leaving residents
to deal with the erosion.
Mitchell stepped in, appointing himself as
protector and spokesperson for the city. He
continued to lure vacationers to the island,
despite a growing lack of luxury. When win-
ter storms washed out roads, Mitchell and his
wife would use “a wheelbarrow full of sand
and rocks and a shovel trying to shovel back
in the land and prevent erosion,” Cutter said.
There was little one man could do to com-
bat the forces of nature. In 1952, a huge breach
occurred, entirely cutting Bayocean off from
the mainland. That same year, Mitchell’s wife
suff ered a stroke. The couple left Bayocean
to seek medical help. They never returned.
Mitchell’s wife died. He was sent to Oregon
State Hospital in Salem by court order. Some
reported he was driven mad by his failed pur-
suit to save Bayocean.
The Corps eventually built a second jetty
in the early 1970s and most of the erosion
stopped. Today the spit is managed by Tilla-
mook County. Visitors can walk the beach,
hike trails and picnic. Little evidence of the
once extravagant resort city remains.
Crafting the album
Cutter said he wants Rectangle Creep’s
“Bayocean” album to increase awareness of
the true cautionary tale of interfering with
natural landscapes without proper research.
He wants listeners to remember that human
actions have consequences.
“I would hope for people to see … how
easy it is to mess with your surroundings with
something as innocuous as building a jetty —
then all of the sudden you are literally watch-
ing the land slide away before your eyes,”
he said. “I really think that climate change
is going to reach that point unless people are
willing to recognize that things are defi nitely
happening, even if you don’t perceive them
happening incrementally.”
Cutter based most of the album’s lyrics
on extensive research he conducted about the
lost resort city. Some of the songs, though,
add a dramatized reimagining of history, Cut-
ter said. For example, in one song about the
Potters, Cutter sings, “Go get the Buick and
load up the shotgun,” referencing a potential
business deal.
“TB Potter, the elder developer, and his son
… were defi nitely pretty ruthless land devel-
opers. The son was the bulldog that would go
in there and make the hard sell,” Cutter said.
“But as far as I know they weren’t into any
serious mafi a leg breaking … That was all just
to inject a little drama into the proceedings.”
Cutter said he makes music for fun, not
fame but he does envision one day striking
it big enough to gather his bandmates for a
trip to Oregon, where they could perform live
before an audience in honor of Bayocean.
“We joke amongst ourselves that maybe
when our record goes platinum, they will
invite us to the Bay City Arts Center to play a
show,” Cutter said. “That would be a dream,
to be able to put together a whole libretto and
show around that record and perform it in Bay
City.”
Mallory Gruben/For The Astorian
The Bayocean spit straddles the Pacifi c Ocean and Tillamook Bay.
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