From Cannon Beach’s first hotel to a visiting  future president eating blackberry pie to beach patrols during World War II, the second phase of Cannon Beach Historical Society’s permanent exhibit chronicles the highlights and everyday trends of life in Cannon Beach from 1911 to the early 1940s.

The interpretive exhibit which opened in mid-August is the second of three phases in the museum’s permanent exhibit titled “Cannon Beach: A Place by the Sea.” The exhibit takes its name from a history of Cannon Beach written by Terence O’Donnell and published in 1996.

The new exhibit continues the history narrated in the first room of the museum, a history which begins 15 million years ago with the geological formation of Cannon Beach, and continues through the turn of the 20th century. 

When visitors are finished exploring how Haystack Rock was formed, how much it cost to ride the “Daddy Train” in the early 1890s (which on summer weekends brought men working in Portland to visit their families living in Cannon Beach) and how Tillamook Lighthouse was constructed, they can step through the orange doors into phase two and the Warren Hotel, circa 1911 to 1944.
                   
The hotel’s atmosphere is recreated with chairs originally used in the Warren Hotel, and a vintage table and chess board which were donated to the museum. The windows in the room give visitors an “ocean view” similar to the view seen by patrons of the hotel. The ocean scene is provided by plastic inserts placed inside the windows and frames a large stone fireplace on the  room’s east wall.
                   
On the mantle of the fireplace sits a painting of the Cannon Beach’s shoreline during a time when the Warren Hotel was only building on the beach.
                   
But the real focal point of the room is the information.
                   
Text and pictures for the display were the result of a collaboration between members of the historical society’s exhibit committee and the Salem-based business Interpretive Exhibits.Interpretive Exhibits also suggested some of exhibit’s multimedia displays, such as two period telephones, from the 1920s (with a hand crank) and one from the beginning of World War II (a rotary), which museum-goers can pick up to hear a recording about life in Cannon Beach during those two eras. Also on display is a 1950s’ television which plays video of a family in the late1930s or 1940s playing football, flying kites and generally relaxing on the beach. 
                   
The written narrative of Cannon Beach used in the museum came partly from O’Donnell’s book, but it was also rewritten and distilled into a storyline by Historical Society president John  Williams. 
                   
In addition to panels with historical photos on the walls, a display case houses the registers from several local hotels around the turn of the century, as well as artifacts such as a chamber pot and key used at the Warren Hotel.
 
Among the famous names listed in the early hotels’ registers include the lawyer and politician Williams Jennings Bryan, then-presidential hopeful Woodrow Wilson (who won the presidency in 1913), and the Warren Hotel’s first guest, Oregon governor Oswald West, who, two years after staying at Cannon Beach’s first ocean-front hotel, built Cannon Beach’s first ocean-front home.
                   
In a writing titled “Ecola? Eola? Cannon Beach,” visitors to the center get a brief explanation as to why in 1922 the city dropped its original name of Ecola and adopted Arch Cape’s first name: Cannon Beach.
                   
Other panels about the 1920s reveal that while the population of Cannon Beach remained constant at about 150-200 during the decade, because of cheap lumber and relative ease of transportation (it took five hours to get to Portland rather than a day), the number of vacation homes increased. 
                   
Displays include examples of advertisements from the days when tourism was first getting started in Cannon Beach, and in a desk facing the window, a vacationer writing home on Warren Hotel stationery tells about a nice young man who treated her family to rides in his automobile.
                   
In addition to video footage that shows a family enjoying “natural” pastimes on the beach such as football and kite-flying, the exhibit also touts the opening of Cannon Beach’s indoor activities:  the Natarium, an indoor pool which pumped and heated ocean water indoors; the Waves Roller Rink; the Duck Pin Bowling Alley; and outdoor movies, projected onto the sides of buildings like the “Nat” and the roller rink.
                   
The exhibit recounts how Cannon Beach was hit hard twice by the Depression: first the economic impacts of vacation homeowners who sold their homes and then storms which frequently flooded the downtown area. A voice on the rotary phone gives more details about life in the Depression.
                   
The final panel shows Cannon Beach emerging from the Depression. It chronicles the 1936 donation of land that led to the creation of Ecola State Park, the Arch Cape tunnel completed in  the same year which made Cannon Beach more accessible, and World War II military members who were stationed in Cannon Beach.
                   
Planning has begun for phase three of the permanent exhibit, which will chronicle Cannon Beach’s history through the present day, and continue along the museum’s north wall. 
                   
Williams said the society’s goal is to complete the final part of the exhibit by next summer. The money for phase three is being raised as part of $150,000 earmarked for exhibitions in an $800,000 capital campaign drive. Other planned exhibitions that would come out of the $150,000 include an outdoor wetlands interpretive area, an interactive exhibit and an improved temporary display showcase.
                   
Phase two of the permanent exhibit cost approximately $30,000-$40,000, which came from private donations, notably a donation from the Clark family, said Williams.
                   
The Historical Center is located at the corner of South Spruce Street and Sunset Boulevard. It is open Wednesday through Saturdays 1-5 p.m. Admission is $2 for adults, $1 for children 6-17 and free for children under 6 and Cannon Beach Historical Society Members

Text and Haystack photo © 2002 Cannon Beach Gazette.  Other phots are links to their original sources, which offer additional information about the subject..