17 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Terrible Tilly, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, near Cannon Beach, Oregon, has been in the news lately as the current owners are listing the 141-year old lighthouse for sale for $6.5 million. Originally purchased in the 1980s to be a columbarium, after 42 years of ownership only 31 people have been laid to rest when the actual capacity of the lighthouse was estimated at 300,000 urns. The lighthouse has always been known for extreme weather and being nearly inaccessible much of the year, so the story of how it got there in the first place is quite interesting. What made “Terrible Tilly” so terrible? Question continues An 1891 photo of Tillamook Rock and lighthouse. A Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) story on Great Lighthouses of Oregon has a history of the construction of the lighthouse. After investigation of the headlands in this area, it was determined that there were no viable locations which either were stable enough to support the construction of a lighthouse or low enough to not be regularly engulfed by fog. Any locations that might have worked would have required the construction and maintenance of a road nearly 20 miles long. With the mainland options exhausted, Congress and the U.S. Lighthouse Board were left to consider offshore options or The Lost Surveyor
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