Our Daily Sykes #74 – Yaquina Match

Sunset over the Pacific beyond the Yaquina Bay portal and its jetties seen from the great arching Newport Bay Bridge. Click to Enlarge

Since Horace Sykes did not caption his subject, I needed some help.   With good effect I asked coastwise historian Gene Woodwick, and she helped track these jetties down.

Since Sykes lived in Washington I thought first of the Washington coast, but what ports are there along our coast with jetties that resemble these?  None.  Gene suggested I move to Oregon, which is where Sykes came from when he moved to Seattle in the late 1920s to take up a new job as an adjuster with Northern Life Insurance.  With Gene’s advice I started near the south end of the Oregon coast at Gold Beach, where the jetties are about 900 feet apart.   But they did not match.  Next I backtracked south to Chetco River – about 250 ft. wide at the mouth – but without success.  Then I Googlecoptered up the entire Oregon coast and found six more pairs of jetties – and so eight in all.  They appear in this order, south to north: Chetco, Gold Beach, Coos Bay (1700 feet), Glenada/Florence  (750 feet), Yaquina Bay / Agate Beach / Newport (1100 feet), Tillamook Bay (1200 feet), Nedonna Beach (650 feet), and Rockaway Beach (600 feet).  All those widths are approximate measures using Google’s yardstick.

It was not difficult to match the Yaquina Bay jetties, as looking west from the  north end of the Newport Bay Bridge’s great arch, as the correct choice.   We cannot tell, however, if Horace Sykes shot from a moving car or stopped for a moment on the bridge.  You may note the lone boat heading into port.

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