4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL AUGUST 16, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: HWY. 101 and the beach
By Finn JD John
Tom McCall
was a smart,
articulate man,
and not easy to swindle. But Glenn “Mr.
Oregon” Jackson was, by all accounts,
even smarter — and he had something
he wanted from McCall.
Which was fair enough, because McCall
also wanted something from Jackson —
wanted it badly: An endorsement of his
candidacy for governor.
It was 1966. Tom McCall, having
clinched the Republican nomination, was
going up against the smart, tough-mind-
ed state treasurer, Democrat Bob Straub.
McCall and Straub were very similar
in many respects, and although Oregon
voters tended to favor Republicans at
that time, the outcome was by no means
a sure thing.
And Jackson, the state highway commis-
sioner and owner of ten Oregon news-
papers, was the most powerful behind-
the-scenes player in the state. People
answering to him built the Interstate
freeway system and made Oregon’s sec-
ondary highways the envy of the West.
So for McCall, a lot depended on this
endorsement interview. Put starkly, Jack-
son was in a position to choose the next
governor; neither McCall nor Straub
could win without his infl uence.
On that day, McCall found Jackson in
a genial and friendly mood. And the
meeting seemed to go very well. After
the preliminaries, the commissioner
made a proposal: There was a project he
was working on, he explained. A high-
way improvement over at the coast. It
would bring huge economic benefi ts to
the communities there; it would open up
the north coast to motor tourism from
surrounding states; it would give Ore-
gonians access to a part of the coast that
few would otherwise see. All the engi-
neering work was done; it was ready to
go. But Jackson was running into some
trouble with the usual ragtag band of
local obstructionists, and this particular
group was especially noisy.
Now, if McCall would commit to taking
a strong position in favor of this project,
and promise to help Jackson get the job
done, Jackson would endorse McCall
full-throatedly, with all the infl uence he
For The Sentinel
and his ten community newspapers and
network of well-connected friends could
provide.
McCall, lulled into complacency by the
friendly and laid-back character of the
conversation, accepted immediately. One
pictures him walking on air as he left the
building. With Jackson’s endorsement,
he would be elected governor; it was
almost guaranteed.
But it couldn’t have taken McCall more
than a day or two to fi nd out he’d been
conned. The fact was — as McCall
would have quickly learned if he’d
looked into it before saying yes — he
already had Glenn Jackson’s support,
simply because he was running against
Bob Straub. Jackson would sooner have
cut off his left foot than endorse Bob
Straub. Bob Straub was Glenn Jackson’s
number-one political enemy.
Also, remember that ragtag band of
local obstructionists whom Jackson had
casually mentioned? It was neither rag-
tag, nor local. It was, in fact, led by Bob
Straub.
The project over which Straub and
Jackson were locking horns that year
was a doozie. It was a plan to move and
straighten Highway 101 between Ne-
skowin and Tillamook. If you’ve ever
driven up that way, you’ll doubtless have
noticed that the highway leaves the coast
behind and plunges inland for 35 miles
— routing around sandy estuaries at
Nestucca Bay, Sandlake and Netarts Bay,
and impassible granite promontories at
Cape Kiwanda, Porter Point and Cape
Lookout.
That was a lot of grand ocean scenery
that was inaccessible to anyone not
willing to drive miles out of the way on
little bumpy back roads and maybe even
get out of the car and walk. And this was
the era of Sunday drives; dependable and
comfortable cars were, in the mid-1960s,
a relatively new thing for most people of
modest means.
So in 1964, Jackson’s highway depart-
ment worked up a plan to do something
that would bring those Sunday motorists
to that grand ocean scenery: Build a
highway right through the middle of it.
There were actually three possible plans
for the new highway, but the cheapest
one, and the one the department wanted,
was to have the new highway route start
just north of Neskowin and go straight
to the beach. From there the roadbuild-
ers would blast through Porter Point,
cross the Nestucca River with a 90-foot-
high bridge, then traverse the length of
Nestucca Spit State Park on a causeway
built on pilings drilled into the sand. It
would then go through Cape Kiwanda
with the aid of more dynamite, across
McPhillips Beach and through the Sand-
lake Estuary on a roadbed made with
acres of trucked-in fi ll, and fi nally rejoin
the current highway route just south of
Tillamook.
Public response to the plan was mixed,
but mostly favorable. The local year-
round residents were mostly in favor of
the plan, but the weekenders — Willa-
mette Valley residents who owned cabins
at the beach — were less enthusiastic.
Where the trouble arose was with resi-
dents who particularly enjoyed natural
features that the plan was about to com-
pletely ruin. These now started to form
groups to oppose the plan — notably
one called “SOS,” which stood for “Save
Our Spit.”
No problem. The department was used to
this sort of thing. A few public hearings
so folks would feel “listened to,” and
then construction would start whether
they liked it or not. You couldn’t stop
progress — not in 1965 you couldn’t.
What the department was not used to
was powerful politicians getting in-
volved. And that’s what happened now.
Because among that small group of
locals who enjoyed natural features that
the plan was about to ruin was one Rob-
ert W. Straub, the state treasurer — and
a regular visitor to Nestucca Spit State
Park.
Straub took one look at the plans and in-
stantly became Jackson’s worst-case sce-
nario. He wrote hundreds of letters and
memos, carried a petition with 12,000
signatures around with him much of the
time, organized marches and protests —
all the while continuing to do his job as
state treasurer and, in 1965, launching
the bid for the governorship that brought
Tom McCall to Jackson with cap in
hand. If only McCall had done a little
research before he showed up for that
meeting ….
So history marched on, and McCall was
elected. He kept his word to Jackson and
pushed for the highway, albeit with far
less enthusiasm than Jackson might have
wished for; ironically, he was doing this
at the same time as his far-more-well-
known fi ght to preserve public beach
access. The optics of this were terrible,
and people were already starting to ask
uncomfortable questions about it.
Luckily, the matter was taken out of
McCall’s hands before it could go any
farther. Bob Straub had been in contact
with Interior Secretary Stewart Udall
after learning that most of Nestucca Spit
had carried a deed restriction when the
federal government ceded it to the state
back in 1961: it had to be used for a
park.
Jackson, of course, fi gured this was no
problem. The spit was already a state
park; the highway would simply provide
better access to it. But Straub thought
Udall might not consider that to be in
keeping with the spirit of the deed re-
striction, and brought it to his attention.
It took a while for Udall to get around to
looking into the matter. But when he did,
he was unambiguous about it. No, the
state of Oregon could not build a high-
way there. If it did, the Bureau of Land
Management would take action to cancel
the land transfer.
And just like that, the fi ght was over.
The highway department prepared and
presented a new plan — a much costli-
er one, involving running the highway
around the former BLM land on a raised
causeway over miles and miles of open
water in Nestucca Bay. It seems likely
this plan was offered as a face-saving
move, because it quietly died a few
months later, and Nestucca Spit has been
a peaceful, highway-free park ever since.
In 1987 its name was changed to Bob
Straub State Park.
As for Straub, he was fi nally elected
governor of Oregon in 1974 after Mc-
Call’s second term ended. He lived long
enough to see his beloved Nestucca Spit
State Park renamed in his honor; he died
in 2002 in Springfi eld.
C ottage G rove
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