From afar, the Tilamuk Rock Lighthouse (Tillamook Rock) seems like every real estate investor’s dream. It offers Oregon Coast View from its top and is located on an island just two kilometers off the coast. Most days, all that is heard on the lonely island is the sound of waves “breaking” on the rock. The loneliness is “broken” by the birds that nest there and sea elephants.
For over a century withstands storms, guides sailors, hosts wildlife and cremated remains. The lighthouse, which is a local legend and is called “Terrible Tilly”, is now being prepared for the next owners. But first, they will need $ 6.5 million, incredible willpower and some sort of way to get there.
The waters around the island are so wild that boats can not moor. The only way to get there is by helicopter – even so, many times sea elephants land at the landing site, according to Mimi Morissette, head of Eternity at Sea, an Oregon company that owns the lighthouse.
The building and the lighting fixture need major renovation. Sea elephants have invaded its interior and been damaged by storms. The windows are sealed and the door is broken. Its surface is full of bird droppings. Ashtrays are located inside. Morissette, 77, introduced “Tilly the Terrible” to the only companies she would be interested in: at funerals.
For 300 years, more than a thousand lighthouses have been built in the United States to guide sailors to avoid collisions off the coast. Some have been dismantled by natural disasters or replaced by automation and turned into homes and museums.
The Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is Oregon’s only coastal lighthouse and was commissioned in 1881. For 76 years, Tilly guided ships on the Columbia River until it was decommissioned in 1957 and replaced by an electronic buoy.
However, the tower that rises 41 meters above the sea continues to inspire legends. He became known as “Tilly the Terrible” because of the isolation and the storms faced by the workers who cared for him, according to Andrea Suarez-Kemp, director of the Canon Beach Historical Center and Museum. “Everyone loves to tell stories about mysterious lights and figures [στον φάρο]. “They come to the museum and ask us if Tilly really doesn’t work anymore, because they say they saw lights there.”
In 1959, the U.S. General Services Administration opened a store in Tilly. Ms. Morissette and her associates bought it in 1980 for $ 50,000 to use as a columbarium, according to government documents. The lighthouse lost its license in 1999, while in 2005 there was a refusal to issue a new license due to violations.
The plan is for the lighthouse to be used as an alternative for those who wish to scatter the ashes of their loved ones at sea. Instead, the ashes will be placed in titanium containers and stored inside forever.
“It seems strange to me that some people still like to scatter ashes in the sea: ‘Dad is in the ocean and Mom is floating next to the sharks,'” said David Adams, a funeral home consultant who is also the sales broker.
The new owners will get a building where dramatic events happened, at least twice. In 1879 a carpenter fell into the sea and in 1911 a painter fell from the stairs to the rocks. “It’s a mysterious and a bit macabre place,” says Brian Rati, author of Tillamook Rock Lighthouse: History & Tales of Terrible Tilly.
In 1944, James A. Gibbs Jr., a member of the Coast Guard, was forced to work at the lighthouse. He has written about his experience: “Everywhere I looked, this place reminded me more and more of a madhouse.”
Copyright: 2022 The New York Times
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