The Story Of Bayocean, The Oregon Ghost Town That Fell Into The Sea

Located on the coast near Tillamook, there was once a lively little resort town. However, if you were to visit today, you would never guess that a city had once existed there. The town was called Bayocean, but it’s also known as “the town that fell into the sea.”

Back in 1906, the town was built on a sand spit overlooking Tillamook Bay. Over the next few years, the town reached a population of 2,000, and was home to a post office, stores, a hotel, a dance hall, a movie theater, a bowling alley, a cannery, and more. This bustling little seaside city was projected to be “the Atlantic City of the West.”

The town’s glory days were relatively short lived, however. To make it easier to travel to the town by boat, they decided to build a jetty to lessen the force of the tides. Little did they know, this simple mistake of human intervention would lead to the town’s demise. The change in the tide caused the shore to be eroded by the sea, and soon the earth beneath the town began to slip away, destroying the buildings. The town was abandoned, and by 1960, the last of the buildings were washed away.

Nowadays, you can visit the Bayocean Peninsula County Park, where the town once stood. Not a speck of Bayocean remains, but the stories will linger for years to come.