Nehalem Bay Life
Nehalem Bay Life
Who are Manzanita part-time residents?
April 2021
Donna Morrow
This article by part-time resident Donna Morrow is the first in a series written to get better acquainted with part-time residents and to discover why they have centered their dreams in Manzanita.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” Henry David Thoreau, American Naturalist, poet, and philosopher said these inspirational words, perhaps from his pastoral retreat on Walden Pond. Like Thoreau, many of us have found our dreams in beautiful Manzanita.
From the Big Apple to the Little Apple on foot
May 2021
Marcia Silver
“You don’t have a car? How do you do that?” Isabel Beaton and I are used to the look of incredulity that accompanies those questions. After all, Manzanita is a small town in a semi-rural area with limited public transportation and few pedestrian-friendly streets and roads. It is more or less by coincidence that both Isabel and I ended up in Manzanita after lives and careers in New York City. Isabel is a native New Yorker; I lived in Brooklyn for 30 years. We both spent years riding the NYC subway system that connects the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx with 691 miles of tracks, 28 routes, and 472 stations. We didn’t need cars to get around.
Read the article starting on page 7 here
Part-time family settles into Manzanita lifestyle.
June 2021
Donna Morrow
In her popular book, At the Foot of the Mountain, author Jane Comerford describes Manzanita as a charming community tucked below Neahkahnie Mountain with a long sandy beach and waving dunes. She details the local lore about shipwrecks and vast treasures. No one has yet to unearth chests of gold, silver and jewels. Still, there are other treasures to be found in our city.
Read the article starting on page 4 here
550 words in the life of an Airbnb host
July 2021
Ketzel Levine
I hate the guests who are arriving today. My revenge is a vase of flowers with gaudy pink rhododendrons. I added some Spanish lavender on the chance these folks turn out to be delightful, but then I remembered their cursory answers to my courteous questions and threw in an overbred bearded iris. Now that’s insulting.
Read the article starting on page 6 here
Won't you be my neighbor?
May 2022
Donna Morrow
Fred Rogers, the long-running pre-school television host and creator of "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" always set out the welcome mat in his fictional television town. Now, in Manzanita, can we be like Fred and welcome the influx of new neighbors who are settling here permanently?
Read the article starting on page 5 here
Who is looking out for our local environment? - Getting the story behind the acronyms
June 2022
Lorraine Ortiz
The natural beauty of North Tillamook County is unique. For many, it is the source of their desire to spend more time or even to relocate here. In the recent Tillamook County 2020 Strategic Vision, over 62% of the 350 respondents indicated that local natural resources and recreation most influenced their decision to live in Tillamook County.
Who supplies our water and is there enough?
July 2022
Recent spring rains and heavy stream flows were a reminder that our region has an average annual rainfall of about 90 inches. We shouldn’t have to worry about having enough water to drink, wash, and irrigate our gardens. Or should we? What about the growth of new homes and increased numbers of visitors? Will we have enough water in the future? In this article Manzanita Today will explore the sourcing and delivery of water to Nehalem Bay homes and businesses.
Nehalem Bay Art Community
December 2022
Carl Whiting
A surprising number of artists live and work in our coastal communities. (Tillamook County art galleries) How and why did they come to live in our area? How do they sustain their lives in art here? Manzanita Today asked local artist Carl Whiting to profile local artists to help us gain perspective on the local art community.
The risks and rewards of running a local business
January 2023
The present-day economy of the Nehalem Bay area is quite distinct from the dreams of early 20th Century pioneers like Edmund Lane and Sam Reed. In 1910 the Tillamook County population of 6,266 was engaged in logging, fishing, and agriculture. A year later, when the railroad from Portland opened, speculators and developers were planning 27 new towns and cities in the county and 10,000 new homesites in North County.
Making it "work" in Manzanita
May 2023
The pandemic scrambled many people’s working lives. More people began working remotely, some from their Nehalem Bay vacation homes. The adjustment for residents who already lived here and worked remotely was not so dramatic. For people who did make radical life or work changes, the ability of one person in a household to work remotely made that transition possible. We offer four stories that illustrate a wide range of people who are making it “work” while living in a beautiful place.
Our Library - A Community of Friends and Readers
September 2023
Judith Sugg
Have you ever wondered why our small village is home to a fully staffed library when so many other communities lack such a vital resource? It is a remarkable story of cooperation among three local communities, dedicated citizens, and a supportive county library system.
Dramatic Transformation: The Riverbend Players
Date October 2023
Donna Morrow
Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer and poet who became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the 1890s, once said, “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” The art form of theater is alive and well a few miles east of Manzanita at the renovated Performing Arts Center at NCRD. The 193-seat theater has played host to the Riverbend Players for over 20 years.
A guided tour of Nehalem Bay architecture
February 2024
Jim Fanjoy
Architecture is both purposeful and cultural. We expect architecture to quietly do its job of protecting us from the elements, facilitating our social gatherings, and sometimes even allowing us to express our artistic inclinations. Most of us don’t think about how buildings do those basic jobs while reflecting the local community’s culture, but architects think a lot about this sort of thing. This whirlwind architectural tour of the Nehalem Bay area is informed by my 15 years of living here as a practicing architect.
No more seagulls: CARTM and the recycling ethic
May 2024
Mark Beach and Jessi Just
The Manzanita transfer station and recycling center looks orderly today, but as late as the 1980s hungry seagulls and scavenging rats competed for food waste at the public dump on the site. While parents threw garbage in the trash heap, kids shot at the rats with rifles or slingshots. Anyone from anywhere could dump anything at any time. A large septic tank receptacle had no drain field. Locals complained about the smell of burning animal carcasses, abandoned cars, and smoke from the smoldering sludge drifting over town.
Roller Derby: Entertainment, Culture, or Sport?
August 2024
Keri Scott says she "likes to hit people." Not at her day job at the Nehalem Bay Wastewater Agency, but after work when she straps on skates, slips into her roller derby person ("Skid"), and competes for the Tillamook Derby Dames. For other Dames, such as Kristina Vatne ('Splat") from the City of Tillamook, roller derby is close to a religion. While the Derby Dames team struggles to maintain a full roster in a sparsely populated county, roller derby competition and culture is flourishing throughout the Willamette Valley, with Portland as the epicenter.
Hoffman Center for the Arts: Manzanita's cultural heart celebrates 20 years
September 2024
Lori Tobias
Only two years ago, the Hoffman Center for the Arts didn't have even one paid employee. The Manzanita arts center remedied that in late 2022 with the hiring of its first paid executive director. As the nonprofit prepared to celebrate its 20th anniversary on Saturday, August 31, board members were plotting the next steps in ensuring the center's continuing role as a cultural hub for the arts.
Saving a community icon: creation of North County Recreation District
October 2024
Mark Beach and Lucy Brook
The NCRD story begins in 1921 when Nehalem School District opened a new elementary school. Nine years later, the story took on a new dimension when school district voters passed a bond issue to build a pool under an addition to the original building. The pool transformed the school into a community icon.
Paddles up-Nehalem Bay Tide Runners glides into a new decade.
January 2025
Shirley Perez West
It's 7:am., an unseasonably cold and rainy August morning on Vancouver Island. Eighteen women clad in black running gear with electric green accents scramble to arrange camp chairs, snacks, and other gear under a pop-up tent. If not for their many layers, their jerseys would reveal they are the Nehalem Bay Tide Runners, a women's dragon boat team.
Early dairy farmers in Tillamook County and the role of immigrants in that history.
February 2025
The Tillamook Cheese factory looms large in the county as an economic enterprise and tourist attraction. Cheese holds first place on the county's official seal: "Land of Cheese, Trees and Ocean Breeze." In the first of two articles on the county's dairy industry, we consider the early years up to the formation of the Tillamook County Creamery Association in 1909.
Sixty years ago, the "Big Split" divided families and friends but positioned Tillamook Creamery for growth.
March 2025
In our February issue, the article on Tillamook County's dairy industry concluded with the 1909 formation of the Tillamook County Creamery Association (the Creamery) to develop consistent quality among three dozen cheese factories. Today, Tillamook Cheese is the fastest growing brand in the country. In this article we explain how that happened.