Manzanita Sites

Among the challenges in constructing the final link in Oregon's Highway 101, the state's bridge engineer responded by designing Chasm Bridge on Neahkahnie Mountain. Using Bureau of Public Roads funds and design advice from the National Parks Service, workers completed the bridge in 1937. An information plague located at a viewpoint on Neahkahnie Mountain describes the project, writing: "Built on the sheer face of Neahkahnie Mountain, this 59-foot reinforced concrete deck girder is a major engineering feat! Designed by Glenn S. Paxton, the bridge features stone masonry on its face and railings, which extend nearly uninterrupted around the mountain." Chasm Bridge is also...

Neahkahnie Mountain rises almost perpendicularly, 1600 feet from the Pacific Ocean. This headland posed an engineering and budgetary challenge to the completion of the Oregon Coast Highway until funding was provided by the Bureau of Public Roads and labor was provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Improvements to this fourteen-mile section of highway between Cannon Beach and Manzanita took approximately eight years to complete. Just before the roadway's opening in 1941, The Sunday Oregonian referred to it as "chiseled on rocky Neahkahnie Mountain" and informed prospective motorists that they would be traveling over a road that "cost $100,000 a mile." The...

Referred to as either Necarney Creek or Sam Reed Bridge, this bridge was a critical part of the completion of the Neahkahnie Road section of Highway 101, As described on a Oregon Department of Transportation plaque at the Neahkahnie Mountain Viewpoint of Highway 101: ". . . this is one of Oregon's first bridges to be constructed with steel girders and towers. The 602-foot deck, with gothic arch balustrades railings, rises 90 feet above Necarney Creek in a broad sweeping curve." Locally known as the Sam Reed bridge, the name honors an individual active in the area's promotion. Samuel Reed developed the town...

Oswald West State Park, known for its quiet, secluded beach and its picturesque trail system, was established in the early days of the Depression. At that time, it was known as Short Sands Beach State Park. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp was located within the park from 1939 through 1941. During those years, the CCC enrollees worked primarily on developing the park's trail system. The CCC Camp improved the park property as work on the Neah-kah-nie section of the Coast Highway (Highway 101) underwent construction. Before the nine-mile section of road between Cannon Beach and Manzanita opened, access to Short...