4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JUNE 28, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Cape Foulweather's building
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
S
ometime in the late
1860s, a sailing ship
hove to just off the Or-
egon coast, near the mouth of
Yaquina Bay.
This ship was full of build-
ing materials. Its mission was
to land those materials on Cape
Foulweather — today known
as Otter Crest — so that a new
lighthouse could be built there.
It would be quite a thing, this
lighthouse. Plans called for it to
be 93 feet tall (it’s still the tallest
on the Oregon coast), equipped
with a fi rst-order Fresnel lens,
painstakingly packed in molas-
ses and shipped halfway around
the world from France. From
high atop the bluff at Cape
Foulweather, it would reach out
some 18 miles with the light of
its oil lamp, a model designed to
burn ordinary lard.
There was just one problem.
No one had given any thought
to how the supplies were to be
unloaded at Foulweather. And
now, staring at the hungry fangs
of rocks with breakers crashing
over them, the crew of the sail-
ing ship were scratching their
heads.
But, the cargo had to be de-
livered. And so it was: four
miles farther south, on a friend-
lier-looking headland.
And that is how the Cape
Foulweather Lighthouse ended
up getting built on the wrong
basaltic outcropping — at least,
according to former lightkeeper
John Zenor, who had the story
from the son of one of the en-
gineers assigned to the project.
“The man said he kept this
secret until his father’s death,”
writes Jim Gibbs in Lighthouses
of the Pacifi c. “It was a number
of years before the government
learned that Cape Foulweather
Lighthouse was really on Yaqui-
na Head. By then it was too late
to rectify.”
Now, keep in mind that this is
a fourth-hand report — the en-
gineer told his son, who told Ze-
nor, who told Gibbs, who tells
us. It’s also true that there was
some confusion in the commu-
nity about the names of Yaquina
Head and Cape Foulweather,
stemming from the fact that
Cape Foulweather is arguably
not a cape, and Heceta Head in-
arguably is one.
But whether by accident or by
design, once the materials were
landed at Heceta Head, the die
was cast. On Heceta Head the
light would go.
The location was tough — not
as tough as Cape Foulweath-
er would have been, but bad
enough. There was a little niche
there at the root of the headland
that, in balmy weather, was pro-
tected from the surf — where
the cobble beach is today. The
crew carved a rude stairway
into the side of the 80-foot bluff
there — basically a stone ladder,
and “worth a man’s life to use
in a heavy wind,” as Gibbs puts
it. And with that, and a derrick
installed at the top of the cliff,
they were able to get to work.
The light went into service on
Aug. 20, 1873, seven years af-
ter President Andrew Johnson
authorized its construction just
after the Civil War. And for the
fi rst few years of its existence,
it was still being referred to in
offi cial correspondence as the
“Cape Foulweather Light.”
As it turned out, the Yaquina
Head location worked just fi ne
for the lighthouse. As the 20th
century dawned on the Oregon
Coast, and the Roosevelt High-
way (Highway 101) was platted
and built, visitors from New-
port and beyond started com-
ing to see the lighthouse and to
indulge in recreational activi-
ties on the government-owned
headland it was built on. Some
of those visitors found it to be
a fantastic source of dense ba-
salt, and a few of them brought
equipment in and quarried it for
various local projects.
So far, so good; federal land
is generally available for Amer-
ican citizens to use. But then, in
the mid-1950s, a Newport grav-
el company staked a mining
claim on the place.
The claim was staked under
the Mining Law of 1872, and
it gave the company exclusive
rights to extract mineral depos-
its from the head. In this case,
of course, the mineral deposits
were the head itself.
Shortly thereafter, the federal
government actually sold the
head to the mining company at
a price that, even then, was low
enough that it probably would
have sent somebody to prison
if anyone had cared enough to
press the case: $3 an acre.
At that point, there would
have been nothing to stop the
mining company from platting
homesites and developing the
peninsula for luxury homes,
which was what many people
thought was the company’s
game plan all along.
But it wasn’t. With the added
security of outright ownership,
the company ramped up mining
operations progressively over
the following dozen years or so,
until by the mid-1970s it boast-
ed a staff of 25 people, busily
hauling hundreds of tons off the
head every workday.
Then, in the mid-1970s, the
situation came to the attention
of the state of Oregon, probably
through the agitation of one of
the then-nascent environmental
organizations concerned about
the speed with which the head
was being dismantled.
The state government started
looking for ways to stop that
process. But it quickly found
that not only could the state not
stop the quarrying, it also could
not stop buying gravel from Ya-
quina Head for its area highway
construction projects. The state
was required by law to take the
lowest bidder on such projects,
and because of its location and
its high yield, the Yaquina Head
quarry was always the lowest
bidder.
Quarry owner Bob Wein-
ert didn’t help his cause much
when, in a 1982 newspaper in-
terview, he shared his vision for
the future of Yaquina Head: he
intended for it to be quarried
right into the sea, leaving noth-
ing behind but a small island out
on the end with the lighthouse
perched on top.
Quite what the federal gov-
ernment’s response to this plan
would have been was never
made clear, or if it was I was
unable to fi nd it. The fact is,
though, Weinert’s plan would
have cost the Coast Guard mil-
lions of dollars and put its per-
sonnel’s lives at risk, because
suddenly instead of simply
driving out onto the headland
to maintain the light, a risky
and complicated landing in surf
would be necessary every time
the place needed a fresh coat of
paint.
But Weinert may have intend-
ed the comment as a joke, be-
cause by the time he gave that
interview, the die had been cast,
and he knew very well that the
quarry would soon be closed. In
1980, Sen. Mark O. Hatfi eld had
pulled some strings in D.C. and
got the head named an “Out-
standing Natural Area.” Thus
fortifi ed, the Bureau of Land
Management then got busy trad-
ing and buying with Weinert to
acquire the head.
Today, the gravel quarry is
gone — but there is a huge div-
ot in the side of the head where
it used to be. Called Quarry
Cove, it is now the scene of the
nation’s only wheelchair-acces-
sible tidepools — which haven’t
been a total success, because the
ocean keeps trying to fi ll them
with beach sand.
Choosing between green juice and green smoothies: A how to guide
Joel Fuhrman MD
For The Sentinel
Vegetable juices and green smoothies
(also called blended salads) both have
a place in the Nutritarian diet. Both are
great ways to get more raw leafy greens
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Relay for Life kudos
If you didn’t attend the Cottage Grove Relay for
Life, you missed out on a great evening.
A big thank you to everyone who worked so hard
putting it on, to the businesses who sponsored it, the
bands who entertained and most of all the survivors
who were able to attend.
It was a beautiful night to stroll around the park in
honor of those who have died from the terrible dis-
eas, cancer.
Come on out next year and enjoy the night.
Pat Couturier
Cottage Grove
into your diet, in addition to your usual salads.
A green smoothie – a blended mix of leafy greens, fruits and nuts
and/or seeds – is an excellent, portable morning meal. It contains
all the fi ber from the greens and fruit, plus fat from the nuts or seeds
to keep you full. A vegetable juice with a small amount of fruit,
depending on size, may be as calorie-dense as the smoothie but will
not be a satisfying meal on its own. For this reason, if you have a
substantial amount of weight to lose, I wouldn’t recommend juicing
often because it will likely add too many extra calories (without the
feeling of satiety) and compromise your weight loss efforts. Also
for those with diabetes, I do not recommend juicing, since the sugar
in the juice enters the bloodstream rapidly without fi ber from the
original vegetables and fruits to slow the process.
Blending and juicing both disrupt the mechanical structure of
plant cells, which increases the accessibility of many micronutri-
ents. Many benefi cial micronutrients – carotenoids, polyphenols
and folate, for example – are often bound to structural compo-
nents or large molecules within the plant cell like fi ber, proteins
and starches. Processing, heating and chewing break down these
cellular structures to increase the availability of the bound micro-
nutrients; however, many may not be accessible for our absorption
by chewing alone. Blending increases our likelihood of absorbing
these nutrients. Importantly, the micronutrients that are bound to
fi ber within the plant cell may be removed with the fi ber by juicing
and therefore be more available via blending than juicing.
With smoothies, you are often adding nuts or seeds as a healthful
fat source. Although blending alone increases the accessibility of
carotenoids, since the presence of fats is known to increase carot-
enoid absorption from leafy greens, it is possible that nuts and seeds
in a smoothie could increase absorption further.
For those who have nutrient absorption problems, gastrointesti-
nal conditions, or other medical conditions, vegetable juices (espe-
cially cruciferous vegetables) are often useful as a supplement to a
healthful diet, providing additional benefi cial nutrients to promote
healing.
Guidelines for juicing and blending:
By blending, you get everything that you would get in juice, so
juicing is not a necessary component of a healthful diet.
Whereas a green smoothie can be a meal, think of a vegetable
juice as a supplement to add extra veggie-derived nutrients to a
healthful diet.
If you do juice regularly, make sure that you are not replacing
your leafy green salads and whole raw vegetables with juices.
Whether you are juicing or making smoothies, be sure to put a
greater focus on vegetables than fruit; use only a small amount of
fruit to add fl avor, so that you maximize nutritional value and limit
glycemic effects.
C ottage G rove
S entinel
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