The light the Coast Guard had to blow up
The Willapa Bay Light went up in 1858, which makes it one of the first on this coast — a white keeper's house with a conical tower coming up through the middle of the roof, the lantern eighty-one feet above the water on a dune at Cape Shoalwater. The cape it stood on was already going. By 1939 the shoreline had come in to within a few feet of the foundation and the surf was effectively at the front door. The keepers walked away in 1938. By 1940 the building was hanging over the edge and drawing crowds who wanted to watch it fall, so the Coast Guard dynamited it rather than wait for the sea and the spectators to meet. The same erosion took the Coast Guard station, the lifesaving station and six hundred and forty parcels of private property — roughly four square miles of North Cove. There is no ruin to visit. The site is underwater, offshore, and that is the whole point of coming: you stand on Highway 105 and look at open ocean where a lighthouse, a village and four square miles of land used to be.
More things to do in Westport & Grayland
Grays Harbor Lighthouse · Johns River Pioneer Cemetery · North Cove Pioneer Cemetery · Ocosta Cemetery · Point Chehalis · Tokeland Hotel