Downtown Coos Bay is a treasure we discovered on our day off week. The building is brand new in among retail stores that are built on an area that once was an enormous pile of wood chips. Chip trucks would back up to the pile and the trailer would be lifted and tilted to pour out the ground-up wood waste of lumber mills. A huge bulldozer would move the pile further up the pile to give room for the next rig. Enormous ships would moor in the adjacent Coos River for the transfer and out to sea they would go heading west. It is odd to see retail there now. Time moves on.
Back to the museum. Nicely done. Emphasis on the bay area history divided into sections like lumber, commerce, Native Americans, early white settlers, environment. The highlight for us was the Fresnel Lens that once protected the Cape Arrago area of the coast. About 35 years ago we rented a beach house on the road to Sunset Bay. From the kitchen window the Arrago light was visible. At dark the light would wash the house at a prescribed interval/ The memory makes me smile.
I have downloaded a photo of the view we had from the house. The walkway had been dismantled. The light decommissioned and the lens removed. Usually that means it gets lost in some warehouse somewhere. Not this time! It is proudly displayed in the Coos History Museum.
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