When A Crusty Find Had Major Historical Implications for the N. Oregon Coast

Published 02/18/25 at 5:39 a.m.
By Andre' Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection

(Cannon Beach, Oregon) – 2007 and 2008 were absolutely landmark years on the Oregon coast. It was in early December of '07 when the Great Coastal Gale hit and tore up enormous swaths of the north coast, knocking down forests and cutting power for thousands in the area. Yet at this time and even in the winter a year before that, storms were letting loose gargantuan tides on the sands, scouring out large chunks of beaches and opening up all sorts of finds – some of which hadn't been seen in decades. (Photos Andre' GW Hagestedt / Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

The two most remarkable finds happened in Coos Bay and in Arch Cape – both with sizable historical implications. Coos Bay had rediscovered the wreck of the George L. Olson that had been there since WWII. Near Cannon Beach, however, the find was groundshaking. This was a major addition to the stories (yes, plural) of how Cannon Beach got its name.

It was an exciting time to be covering the region as a reporter. I'd already been photographing the low sand levels that winter and the aftermath of the storm. Then one day in early February, in my Portland office, I got a remarkable email from Tiffany Boothe at Seaside Aquarium. It was still hush-hush, but it appeared they'd found an old cannon on the beach at Arch Cape. Tiff sent me a photo, but all I saw was a crusty rock that frankly – well – looked like a giant turd. Yet what she told me about it raised the hair on the back of my neck. Wow.

The major story that had replaced coverage of the storm was all the old things they were finding beneath the sands, including bizarre little mounds of red clay-like material known as Red Towers (Rare, Surreal Find Along Oregon, Washington Coast: Red Towers ). These formed underneath layers of sand: basically oxidized elements that had glommed together below, and were only revealed by ten to 20 feet worth of sand getting lifted off a whole beach. Ghost forests more than 4,000 years old were showing up as well as the odd red towers – looking like something out of a Yes album.

A teen from Lake Oswego named Miranda Petrone and her family were out in Arch Cape looking for the red towers and she spotted an especially prominent shape – one that looked like a cannon. She reported this to local authorities, and at first no one believed her. (Photo here: the original cannon found at Arch Cape in the 1890s has been on display at the Cannon Beach History Museum most of the last few decades)

This major discovery almost went bye-bye. It almost went untouched and back into the deep sand. Luckily, Tiff and at least one other person ventured to check it out and they slowly realized this was an old-style cannon from a 19th-century ship: yes, the kind pirates used. They, in turn, consulted with others, and it was confirmed this was an actual cannon from that period. It was so covered in concretions from spending a century and a half under the sand it was virtually indistinguishable from a crusty old rock.

As they slowly dug this one out they discovered yet another cannon as well as chains and one of the stands they would've been mounted on.

Chains of the cannon were also encrusted

Immediately, local historians recognized the the type of cannon: it was just like the one found in Arch Cape in the 1840s, coming from the wreck of the USS Shark, which crashed ashore at Astoria. That cannon is what got Arch Cape the name Cannon Beach (more than a decade before the current town had the name). It and another cannon were seen in 1898, but only one could be rescued from sand and surf at the time.

That's what made this find so remarkable: this was likely the other two cannon from the Shark. It was an incredible news story in Oregon at the time.

Granted, that took a long time to confirm. For months the main narrative was that it could well be the cannon from the Shark, but there were plenty of other shipwrecks out there from that time period.

A bit over a month after getting pulled out of the sand and resting in salt water at Nehalem Bay State Park, Oregon State Parks officials unveiled them for locals and media. This was a riveting moment to see these things firsthand, which were clearly cannon when you got close to them.

In order to preserve them, they had to sit in a mixture like the conditions they lay in over the century. The next step was to send them to Texas for restoration. In the meantime, the PBS show “History Detectives” did a piece on them, and helped to confirm they were indeed from the USS Shark.

The historic cannon and their other parts spent about a year in restoration, then returning to the Oregon coast to be put on display in Astoria at the Columbia River Maritime Museum. The original cannon is on display in Cannon Beach's museum again.

All of it is a long, winding tale. When the historic cannon left the state

Quirky Oregon Coast History: How Cannon Beach Got Its Name Really, it's a Tale of Two Cannon Beach's

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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