Graveyard of the Pacific

Shipwrecks, Ghost Forests, and Surfmen on Oregon's Deadly Shore

A journey north along Oregon's Tillamook Coast from a ghost forest of 2,000-year-old trees to the Columbia River Bar -- the most dangerous river crossing in North America -- through shipwrecks, vanished galleons, vandalized lighthouses, and the surfmen who pulled the living from the dead sea.

Itinerary

1. 2,000-Year-Old Trees from the Sand — A hundred Sitka spruce stumps, buried by a seismic catastrophe two millennia ago, emerge from the sand at every low tide -- a ghost forest that predates the shipwrecks by centuries.
2. The B-17 That Hit the Cape — A narrow headland jutting nearly two miles into the Pacific, where a B-17 bomber crashed into the cliffs during a World War II patrol and the wreckage still lies in the forest above.
3. Vandals and a Fresnel Lens — Oregon's shortest lighthouse, perched on a cliff with one of the finest Fresnel lenses on the coast -- shot at by vandals, cracked, and now preserved behind glass.
4. The Manila Galleon That Vanished — Somewhere near Neahkahnie Mountain, a Spanish galleon from the Manila trade route wrecked in the late 1600s. For three centuries, beeswax blocks and teak fragments have washed ashore.
5. Terrible Tilly — A lighthouse built on a wave-battered basalt rock a mile offshore, so punishing to its keepers that they nicknamed it Terrible Tilly -- now decommissioned and used as a columbarium.
6. Clark's Whale Expedition — The headland where William Clark and Sacagawea trekked in January 1806 to find a beached whale -- and where the view of the Oregon coast stretches from Tillamook Head to Haystack Rock.
7. The Shipwreck That Stayed — A four-masted steel bark that ran aground in 1906 and never left -- its rusting skeleton still stands on the beach at Fort Stevens, the most photographed shipwreck on the Oregon coast.
8. The Graveyard of the Pacific — Where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, currents collide to create the most dangerous river crossing in North America -- responsible for more than two thousand shipwrecks.
9. The Surfmen — The Coast Guard's most demanding motor lifeboat school, where crews train to cross the Columbia Bar in 47-foot boats through waves that can reach forty feet.