Weird Oregon Coast History in Waldport: Monster Legends, UFO Cult, Blowing Up a Bridge

Published 02/20/25 at 7:55 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Waldport, Oregon) – History can yield the wildest stuff. Such as the tiny, rather unassuming town of Waldport on the central Oregon coast. Not much seems to go on there, and that's the attraction. It's mellow and a little off the beaten path.

Yet its past is rather colorful: from a spiritual gathering that turned into a deadly cult, a whale skeleton attraction, a rather cheesy celebrity connection, along with sea monsters and a bridge that was blown up.

The earliest days of Seal Rock – near Waldport – saw one bit of oddball action. Or at least that's the rumor. In 1935, just a few short years before Orson Welles unleashed his famed but inadvertent mass hysteria on the eastern U.S., someone caused a stir on Oregon's coast about a sea monster. A couple that were living at what was then called “Seal Rocks” claimed to have seen a giant monster lashing about in the surf at night. Something that looked like a fierce version of the Loch Ness monster, their reports were extraordinary and seemed straight out of Jules Verne.

Yet that was maybe the point. It was a tabloid-like attempt at getting publicity for the area. See Strange Oregon Coast History: Legend of Seal Rock Sea Monsters

Also in the '30s, there's a whale of a tale out of Waldport – Tillie the Whale, to be exact. This was a wacky roadside attraction for about 30 years on the central Oregon coast: a giant whale skeleton outside of a motel until about the '70s.

It very nearly became an exploding whale decades before the famous one. After washing up in Waldport in late summer 1938, it stank to high heaven. Plenty began actually choking on the smell. There was some brief discussion of blowing it up, but a meat company from Albany came in, removed the guts and took the blubber, then left the skeleton with a motel owner.

It was mounted and displayed out front for decades – and some still remember the curiosity. See Oregon Coast's Tillie the Whale History a Kooky and Dramatic One for the full story.

Believe it or not, blowing up a whale was attempted around this time up in Warrenton, decades before Florence did it. Warrenton Had an 'Exploding Whale' 30 Years Before Central Oregon Coast.

Bayshore Inn in the 2000s

One of Waldport's more interesting moments came in the late '60s when schmaltz singer Pat Boone helped start a hotel complex in the Bayhore area called the Pat Boone Inn. He was part owner but the face of the operation. In fact, one of its kooky highlights is the fact the sign on 101 had a picture of him wearing a pink leisure suit (that sign has never been found).

Another part of the intrigue here is that he was also part owner in a resort in Ocean Shores on the Washington coast about this time, which soon failed – but gave birth to the little town.

After about a year of operation, the Pat Boone Inn financially hit the skids and it changed hands quickly, becoming the Bayshore Inn. It stayed that name for much of the last 50 years. Yet in the early '70s, Boone still showed up ar some Waldport functions, including a beauty pageant hosted by him.

Within a year, the restaurant originally there got in hot water with the state for unpaid wages and other issues. Various eateries have rotated through there over the decades. Waldport's Pat Boone Inn: Oregon Coast Finance Tale That Reached Ocean Shores, Washington

In 1975, things got a bit spooky when a California-based UFO cult held a big meeting at the Bayshore Inn. Numerous locals hopped on board and abruptly disappeared from town, leaving some more than a little worried. The FBI was even called in to look for them. Only then were people starting to suspect this was a cult and not some self-help group that had alien lore tacked onto it.

The cult, oddly enough, had its origins in Gold Beach, and sometime before the '90s they became the Heavens Gate group. Luckily, by that time all the Waldport locals had left: it was about to become one of the most notorious cults ever. In the mid '90s, most of the bunch committed mass suicide in a suburban neighborhood in California. See Heaven's Gate Suicide Cult and its Connections to Oregon Coast

For an extra does of wild drama, check out the wreck of the New Carissa which happened in the late '90s, though it all started in the Coos Bay area. Bizarre Oregon Coast History: Crazed Chaos of the Shipwreck New Carissa

In 1991, Oregon officials actually blew up the bridge at Waldport's Alsea Bay. The original, built in 1936 by famed architect Conde McCullough, was a beautiful classic, but by the '70s is was realized this one wasn't going to last. It took another ten years for construction to start on the new one, built right next to the initial bridge. Another ten years later that structure was ready, so out went the old one with a bang.

After that, it was slowly dismantled until all you now see is the current span.

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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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