People often wonder why Newport has two lighthouses — Yaquina Head and Yaquina Bay – so close together at roughly 3.5 miles apart by sea. The answer is simple, but it’s not the oft-repeated falsehood that one of them was built in the wrong location. Rather, it’s an early example of political maneuvering.
Plans for the lighthouse known today as the Yaquina Head Lighthouse were already in the works, but not happening fast enough for mid and southern Willamette Valley farmers and ranchers who were trying to get their goods to market faster in the mid 1800s, said Katherine Fuller, education specialist. Prior to the installation of lighthouses, ships stopped moving at night, which added to the time it took to get goods to market. Goods from the Willamette Valley were additionally delayed, transported first up the Willamette River and then down the Columbia and onto ships bound for San Francisco. “Politicians representing these folks pushed for a shortcut,” Fuller said.
That shortcut was the harbor-style lighthouse at the entrance of Yaquina Bay.
“The hope was that once the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse was built in 1871, goods could be shipped by rail directly to Yaquina Bay and immediately head south by ship without the time consuming and costly journey to Portland first.”
The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse featured a fifth-order lens, its light shining about 11 miles or half the distance of the seacoast Yaquina Head Lighthouse’s first-order lens, lit in 1873. The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse was decommissioned a year later in 1874.
According to Friends of Yaquina Lighthouses, the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse “... is believed to be the oldest structure in Newport. It is also the only existing Oregon lighthouse with the living quarters attached, and the only historic wooden Oregon lighthouse still standing. The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.”
Today, the 51-foot-tall lighthouse is part of the Yaquina Bay State Recreation Site. Tours of the lighthouse are available October-February. The recreation site features picnic tables and trails to the beach. The Newport Fishermen’s Memorial Sanctuary is also located on site. For more: https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=148
-- Lori Tobias, for The Oregonian/OregonLive