Oregon Coast Icons, Coast Highway 101 Video    

By Barry Murray

The term “Icon” typically is usually venerated as a holy figure in a Byzantine Church. Unfortunately, there is no other word that quite represents the image, idol, portrait, picture, likeness, symbol, sign, figure, statue, paragon, hero, heroine, celebrity, superstar, or favorite sights that are the representation the icons of the Oregon Coast.

For example, there are Highway 101 bridges in competition for the ‘tallest’. However, it is the bridges designed by an artist in the employ of the Oregon Highway Department that people remember as representative of man building upon the beauty of nature.

No one asked Conde McCullough to go beyond functional. It would have been cheaper for the state not to have built his expensive to maintain designs. But, there they are, the Bridges of the Oregon Coast, living on as works of art equal to the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Photographically, many of these bridges span some unusual harbor entrances, as bustling Newport at Yaquina Bay, and Depot Bay that advertises they are the smallest harbor in the world.

And then there is the wreck of the Scottish built steel built sailing bark the Peter Irederdale that has endured as the sight to see for over 100 years where a man made structure has resisted the fierceness of the northern Oregon Coast. Most American’s got their introduction to Oregon’s Costal wonder’s through Dinah Shore’s See The USA In Your Chevrolet TV show. What an irony —as I write this— that the American icon, GM — “mark of excellence” who manufactured the Chevrolet— has been so battered by traitor Wall Street terrorists who sold out our birthright for a CEO bonus.

I like the naturalness of the ‘haystack rocks’ along the shoreline. Surely the yet-another-haystack at Cannon Beach rates right up there with the famous white cliffs of Dover when it comes to recognizable icons of the beaches of the world!