Road Scholar and Backroads of Oregon II - Day 3

Monday, August 6, 2012 - I was informed at 9:00am when I turned in the answers to the 21 questions to The House of Myrtle that the few geocoins left were samples - not trackable geocoins.  However it turned out that the Myrtlewood Geocoin that I was given on Sunday was trackable after all.

After a buffet breakfast at the Red Lion Restaurant we had a lecture on the Geology of the Coast.  At 10:30AM we had a field excursion to Cape Arago State Park, Simpson Reef/Shell Island Overlook and Sunset Bay State Park.   Simpson's Reef is the state's largest sea lion and seal haul-out so I saw California and Steller Sea Lions, Harbor and Northern Elephant Seals. 

We had lunch at Oregon Insititute of Marine Biology in Charleston, featuring their legendary Clam chowder and cheese bread.  We looked in the tanks after lunch. There was a large octopus curled up in one tank.  When I took the octopus' photo it uncurled and scared me. 

We visited Shore Acres State Park in the afternoon.  Shore Acres was the estate of Louis J. Simpson and his family. Louis Jerome Simpson  (1877-1949) was a civic-minded Oregonian who served the south coast, the state, and the nation in his active years.   He fell in love with Cassandra "Cassie" Stearns, who divorced her husband in 1899 to marry him.  

L.J.'s father,  wealthy shipping and timber magnate Asa Meade Simpson, owned North Western Lumber Company in Hoquiam, Washington. The forbearing elder Simpson gave the young couple a new start at his company town of North Bend, north of Marshfield, today's City of Coos Bay.  L.J. purchased the adjacent Yarrow town site, combined it with his father’s holdings, and in 1903 created the City of North Bend.

In 1906-1907, Simpson built a large seaside home with spacious gardens for his wife Cassandra. Shoreacres (Cassandra preferred "Shore Acres") is located on the ocean about fourteen miles SW from Coos Bay-North Bend.  The Simpsons moved to Shoreacres in 1915.

Cassandra Simpson died in April 1921, and the Shoreacres mansion burned in July. Simpson remarried in 1922, and he and Lela Gardner adopted two infant girls. The family lived in the gardener’s cottage until 1928, when they moved into a new house built on the original Shoreacres site.

The crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression took first the Southern Oregon Company's sawmill and then property after property, including the mortgaged Shoreacres. In December 1939, Simpson suffered a stroke. Bankruptcy came in 1940.  The Shoreacres was sold to the State of Oregon for parkland in 1942.  The house was determined unsuitable for restoration and was razed in late 1948.

Simpson died of cancer at his Barview home in January 1949.   His coastal properties became popular state parks: Sunset Beach (Bay), Shore Acres, and Cape Arago.

Joan Luke, another Road Scholar participant, was very knowledgeable about plants so we explored the Rose Garden, Formal Garden, Oriental Garden and Lily Pond, and Rose Display Garden.  I took a photo of her talking to the group leader, Julia Miller.  I photographed several of the outstanding roses.  Joan and I looked in the windows of the Garden House, decorated in the Craftsman style.

We had dinner at the Red Lion, Meeting Room.  Afterwards we had a Video: Oregon Coast Estuaries.  The narrator's voice was terrible and closed caption was evidently not available.  Clearly a waste of time.