When I met Mike Watkins, he remembered that the school had been just a little northwest of the west end of A.G. Beals' dike. The dike had a one-way gate that let Coleman Creek flow out at low tide, but kept Tillamook Bay water from coming back in at high tide. This changed wetland into additional meadow for his dairy cows to graze. When he came to believe the ocean would eventually take the spit, Beals sold his Bayocean/Cape Meares holdings to Mike's grandfather, Robert W. Watkins. The land at the east end of the dike passed down to Mike and his siblings, which is why he's so familiar with it. When the dike that is now Dike Road sealed the breach in 1957, the ocean beach reformed (east of its previous location) and created Cape Meares Lake. Though the meadow and dike are now submerged, Mike said that remnants of the dike were still visible and could be used to point to where the school had been.
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USACE aerial photograph # 39-1546, cropped. |
That would have good enough, but then while looking at the Tillamook County Tax Map - for other reasons - I noticed an active tax lot in the area. The Summary Report for lot #1200 shows it's owned by Tillamook County School District #9. Like many other landowners, they'd kept ownership over the years. ORMAP and other GIS mapping systems project county tax lot layers onto modern aerial landscape views and provide GPS coordinates where a cursor is placed. Coordinates at the center of the school lot are 45.505148 N, 123.958730 W. The school may not have been at the center of the lot, but since the tax lot is only 100' x100' (.23 acres) it couldn't have been far from it. Now I had two ways to locate the school.
The next step was a field trip. Mike was gracious enough to lead me down a trail (viewing deer and an eagle along the way) to what had been the east end of Beals' dike. From there we were able to sight the west end using dike remnants. We then hiked out on the spit. Sighting south to 4th street, and east along the dike, we arrived at a spot on the beach where the coordinates matched. We were there! The spot is just 1/10 mile north of the parking space at the end of Bayocean Road, so easy to reach, and a stump just east of the spot makes it hard to miss. If the ocean reclaims or moves the stump, or moves, the coordinates will still get you there. Based on the aerial photograph and county tax map, the road out to Bayocean from Cape Meares would have been about 500' west of the spot. Average high tide in 1939 would have been about 1000' out.
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Left to right: James Bennett, Rosemarie Bennett, Barbara Parker, Russell Parker; photo from Tillamook County Pioneer Museum |
When I asked, Mike recalled the school grounds being about 10-15' above sea/bay level. After leaving Mike, I saw Harold Bennett in his yard. He had attended Bayocean School, so I stopped to let him know about the stump, and asked him what he thought the school elevation had been. His answer was the same as Mike's. I later found a 1939 USACE topo map confirming Mike's and Harold's recollection. When you stand there, listen for the yells of children at play in the wind above you.
Thank you so much for posting this history. It is priceless.
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