Tillamook Rock Lighthouse
The Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is the most fascinating lighthouse on the Oregon Coast.
It is located about a mile outside Ecola State Park between Seaside and Cannon Beach. The lighthouse is also known as Terrible Tilly for its situation on a rock in the stormy Pacific Ocean.
Because of its terrible location, it was the most expensive lighthouse to operate in the United States.
It operated from 1881 to 1957 when it was replaced by a little whistle buoy. It was always battered from continuous bad weather, and the light keepers lived a strange life in complete solitude.
After it was decommissioned, it changed hands many times, and owners keep trying to make it a columbarium (a structure with recesses in the walls to hold urns filled with ashes of the dead), but with little success.
Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is located 133 feet above sea level and is 62 feet tall. It is the only privately owned Oregon Coast Lighthouse on the National Register of Historic Places and the public does not have access to this lighthouse.
Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is visible from Ecola State Park. The Park has a Day-Use Fee of $3 per vehicle or get an Oregon Pacific Coast Passport.