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"WANDER THROUGH THE PAST  

Reverend Jason Lee was one of the first recorded tourists to Lincoln City, OR

The first approach of Europeans to the Pacific Northwest was by sea. During the eighteenth century Spain, Portugal, England and France explored the Pacific Coast looking for natural resources and a Northwest Passage through the continent. As early as 1572 Sir Francis Drake explored the area, naming it New Albion. Contact with Native Americans remained undocumented until 1788, when Robert Haswell, Captain Robert Gray’s first mate, wrote in the ship’s log of an encounter with two native men in a canoe near the mouth of the Salmon River.

The first recorded tourists came in August 1837. Reverend Jason Lee, his new bride Anna Marie Pittman, Mr. Cyrus Shepard with his wife, Susan Downing, and their guide, Joseph Gervais came by horseback from the Willamette Valley to the coast along the Salmon River Trail. Native Americans helped shape the history of Lincoln City, OR. They camped in a grove of trees near the sea in what was later the Oceanlake area. Here the two couples enjoyed a belated honeymoon, bathing in the surf and relishing many clam and fish bakes. Their journals indicate that they very much enjoyed the unspoiled coast and that their health improved after several weeks of sun and sea air.

Then in 1849, Lieutenant Theodore Talbot gives a detailed account of an exploratory trip he made to Siletz Bay. His journals mention encountering an old Indian man who told Talbot that he and his family were the “last lingering remnants of a large population that dwelt upon these waters.”

In 1855, the area became part of the Coast Reservation and still later, the Siletz Reservation. Homesteaders began arriving soon after Congress passed the Dawes Act in 1887. This act opened up Coast Reservation lands to white settlement and gave eighty-acre “allotments” to reservation Indians. Native Americans, as well as white settlers, first inhabited land along the Siletz River, Siletz Bay, and the Salmon River. Early settlers homesteaded the land and combined subsistence farming with fishing and hunting in order to survive on the isolated coast.

Kernville has the distinction of being the first town in this area. In 1896 Daniel Kern established the Kern Brothers Cannery. Located about five hundred feet above Coyote Rock on the Siletz River, it became the first major industry in North Lincoln County. Daniel’s brother John became the first postmaster when a post office was established at the cannery that same year.

The Siletz River was a fisherman’s paradise in those early years. Salmon abounded; so many you could see a constant disturbance in the water when the fish were going upriver to spawn. Homesteaders fished for extra income. The cannery provided a net, a cabin, net rack and a boat to use on credit. Logging on old Hwy 101 along the Central Oregon Coast By the early 1920s, however, the numbers of fish were diminishing and new regulations in 1935 prohibited driftnet fishing altogether.

The area then turned to logging for its industry. Many men saved their money and bought timber to log in the pioneering days of an industry that was to become the backbone of the Northwest economy. These individuals were known as “gyppos”. After the earliest era of logging with oxen and mule, steam-powered “donkey” engines were used to pull logs out of the woods. When World War I brought the need for Sitka spruce, a wood that was both light enough and strong enough for airplanes, the industry flourished. 

In the recent past and today, Lincoln City relies on tourism for its industry, welcoming guests from around the world to share in its natural beauty and treasures awaiting discovery." Explore Lincoln City