Tilt-A-Whirl®

Wilhoit Springs, Oregon

Wilhoit Springs is the site of an old cold spring resort in Southern Clackamas County, Orgeon.  The site was “discovered” by White settlers right after the Civil War in the late 1860’s.  By the 1880’s, a resort was in full swing at Wilhoit.  The resort had a store, a post office that operated until 1928,  cabins along a creek, a hotel with a restaurant serving Continental fare, a mineral water swimming pool, and a pump house where one could pump the mineral water into glass bottles to take home.  In later years, a bowling alley was constructed.  Although one couldn’t take the train all the way to the springs, it did go as far as Molalla (10km north) and a stagecoach was usually waiting at the station to take visitors to Wilhoit Springs.  The water itself, which was analyzed by a German publisher, “Deutsche Hausohatz”, was said to have almost an identical composition to several therapeutic spas in Europe.  With this information in hand, the owners of Wilhoit bottled and sold the naturally light carbonated mineral water to stores and restaurants in the Portland and Salem areas for over forty years.  It was said to have been great for liver maladies, skin problems, and rheumatism.

Wilhoit Springs prospered until the 1940’s, around the time that most natural spas in North America started to decline.  The store apparently operated until the early 1950’s, along with the cabins.  The first and second hotels atthe site both burned down.  After the second hotel was destroyed, it was never rebuilt.

The site is now owned by Clackamas County and is open to the public.  Although the advertisement below from the 30’s mentions that it’s only an hour’s drive away from Portland, it took me about 90 minutes.   All that remains now are the caretaker’s home (still in use) and the concrete steps that led to the pump house.  There are two springs at Wilhoit, one artesian soda spring (slightly carbonated) and a sulfur spring that is capped but has a manual old-fashioned pump attached to it that still dispenses the spring water.

I currently have blogs posted at two different places, in which I’ve been cross posting everything. To alleviate confusion, I’m going to seperate both blogs.

Starting immediately, all postings regarding my personal life, political opinions, and pop culture will be posted on LiveJournal (http://blog.dorkus.de). All postings regarding my travels to offbeat places, hot springs, ghost towns, and geography will be posted at http://www.thedork.us/wordpress .

Special note to LiveJournal users/friends:
To add my other blog’s feed to your LiveJournal, go to http://www.livejournal.com/syn/index.bml . Go down to the bottom where it says, “Add Feed by URL” and type in: http://www.thedork.us/wordpress/?feed=rss2

I really will start blogging more…I promise!

– Post From My iPhone

So, I went on a three mile hike today. I didn’t wanna be stuck at home alone all weekend, so enlisted a friend to take a short hike with me to Bayocean. If you search Wikipedia, you won’t find much about Bayocean at all which is strange considering that there’s an entire article about Natalie from The Facts of Life. I had to delve into my small home library to find some information about this town that was washed into the sea mid-century.

Bayocean was founded in 1906 by a Midwestern developer who wanted to create a resort community. Initially, the development company would rent a yacht and usher crowds of prospective buyers from downtown Portland, up the Willamette, through the mouth of the Columbia, and down to Bayocean. It’s a bit reminiscent of the way timeshare resort communities offer lucrative vacation packages in hopes that the visitors will buy into one of ‘em.

By 1911, after much campaigning by the developer, the Southern Pacific/PR&N started service between Portland to Bayocean via Hillsboro. Interestingly enough, this line is still used to transport lumber between Portland and the coast (and vice versa). The line comes within a few blocks of my place and I hear the whistles nightly.

Initially the only two ways to get to Bayocean, or most of Tillamook County for that matter, was by rail or boat. The resort town was made up of an elaborate hotel, an indoor salt water swimming pool slash dance hall, a gas station, newspaper, post office, houses, cottages, and a grocery store. Most of these buildings (with the exception of the indoor pool, were all built on top of a 50 metre (~140 ft) sand dune.

Shortly after the town was developed, the US Corps of Engineers agreed to build two jetties at the entrance to Tillamook Bay in order to make the bay deeper to handle ships, as long as Tillamook and Bay City agreed to split the cost. The two small towns couldn’t afford such a giant project. They told the Corps to only build one jetty and they would pay half of the cost. The Corps advised against this, as it would cause the sand on the spit to be carried away and be displaced somewhere else. The two cities eventually talked the Corps into their plan of only constructing one jetty, which was completed in 1917 for $814,000.

By 1925, the beaches and dunes on Bayocean spit started to erode away, just as the Corps had predicted. When the Corps decided to extend the jetty in the 30’s, the erosion became even more destructive. Residents’ front yards started to drop down the dune into the sea at first, followed by houses and entire streets. After several big storms, the peninsula was finally breached in 1948, turning the spit into an island. The breach was up to a mile wide in some spots. What little was left of the town by this time, vandals would soon destroy. Vandals would take motorboats to the new island and do crazy stunts, like pushing a grand piano inside the hotel down the stairs, breaking all of the fine china, and razing houses and sheds.

In 1952, the Corps moved in and burned down all of the structures that remained standing. They then created a new breakwater to recreate the peninsula.

Erosion is still a threat on the peninsula today, although not as fast moving as it was before. Native plants are growing all over the dunes once again–from wild strawberries to Scotch broom.

Sources:
Webber, Bert and Margie. 1989. Bayocean: The Oregon Town That Fell into the Sea. Medford, Oregon. Pacific Northwest Book Company.
“Bayocean: The Playground of the Northwest”, Retrieved 14 June 2009. (http://pdxhistory.com/html/bayocean.html)

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I’m really hoping I can find time to blog again. I’ve been working 11hr days and spend the rest of my time sleeping or babysitting TC. *yikes*

This is way too early early to be awake for me.

Meinen Freunden, Mes Amis, Mis Amigos:

The Goofster has been pretty lax lately when it comes to writing, as always. Heck, my last posting on here was a year ago I think.

This is a test message. Disregard.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

I finally got things straightened out with my credit union and it was much easier than expected. I got off work at K.Roger at 10:30p on Sunday night, high tailed it to Pasco arriving around 2:15a (with a brief stop at Tesoro in Kennewick), fell asleep around 3a, woke up at 7a, and showed up at the main branch for the credit union in Richland at 0900. I explained the situation to them (see prior posting), they had me fill out a dispute form, and I got my $6,950.00 back (well, only $700 of that was actually mine–the rest was overdraft protection). My dad met me in the parking lot of GESA, drove me to the GW Way Starbucks, got goodies, and then hauled ass back to Portland to start work at 2pm. I got home from work about an hour ago and am finally in comfy clothes sipping my beer and relaxing for a change.

One nice thing about driving 8 hours in such a short period of time is that I got to listen to BBC Radio One on Sirius. There’s just something about Britpop that makes me giddy–and I was indeed giddy until they started playing our favourite Bajan, Rhianna Umbahrellah. But the song immediately after was old school Utah Saints (U-U-U-Utah Saints). Who can hate a band that samples This Mortal Coil?

I hadn’t been home since last May. Although I didn’t have time to explore all the new stuff in the Tri Cities (damn job to get to), I did see the new Sonic on Gage Blvd, the new Boehm’s Chocolates, and the (ooh-ahh) 24 hr Walgreens where Burger King used to be on Clearwater. I hated growing up in that podunk Hispano-Mormon town, but it’s always good to be home, if even for only a few hours.

Why Helio’s Customer Service Sucks

So, I was trying to pay my Helio cell phone bill online yesterday as it was a day past due. They’re a pretty aggressive company when it comes to late payments. They text message and spam your email every three to four hours until it’s paid.

I quickly got online yesterday and paid the $69.50 bill with my debit card, but I made a big mistake. I accidently omitted a decimal point and a payment for $6,950.00 was applied. The strange thing about Helio’s website is that it doesn’t ask you to verify the payment amount at all– it just immediately applies it to your account. Immediately realizing my mistake, I called Helio’s customer service to see what I could do about stopping this payment. After speaking with a CSR named Michael for 45 minutes, who spoke heavily Spanish accented English, he reassured me that his supervisor said that this payment would immediately be canceled and to go back online and submit a payment in the correct amount.

Not entirely convinced by the CSR’s affirmations, I immediately contacted my credit union back in the Tri Cities. I spoke with the CSR there who did some research and spoke to her supervisor. The credit union said that a third party security firm they use for VISA debit transactions had refused to pay that amount because it was such an abnormally large figure. She also said that since this was nipped in the bud, I had nothing to worry about.

Well, I tried to buy a song on iTunes today and my card was declined. I went to the credit union’s website and saw a completed transaction paid to Helio for $6,950, which meant another 55 minute call to Helio. The Helio CSR I spoke with today bluntly said he didn’t know what to do and would call a supervisor to see how to handle it. After 16 minutes on hold, he said that they could refund it but that a check would have to be mailed to me. Outraged (especially since I have a rent check floating out there now), I asked for a supervisor. I was on hold for a sup for over 20 minutes and spoke with Mr. Moore. After explaining the situation to him, he placed me on hold for another 15 minutes and said that the team that handles issues like this only works on weekdays and to call back on Monday.

Even more upset, but still calm, I call my credit union again. The CSR there said that I would have to drive 475 miles round trip to fill out a dispute form and that there was nothing they could do with my issue until Monday either. It’s kind of funny that they paid an amount like that, since their overdraft “courtesy pay service” is only supposed to cover up to $400 in overdrafts– not almost $7,000!

From their website:
Courtesy Pay will provide overdraft payments of up to $400 for eligible Gesa Checking Accounts in good standing.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to handle this chaos? I’m afraid of being evicted, am upset that Helio and my credit union permitted a payment this large to be accepted, and am at wit’s end. Advice? Insight?