A tree grew in Tillamook Bay

Published 6:00 pm Friday, January 10, 2025

I remember it from the backseat window. The old, leaning tree between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach, barely visible just before dark, or a black silhouette to break up the glare of the afternoon sun. Cormorants roosting on its branches. Maybe a pelican.

This tree grew up from Tillamook Bay, in the shallow tidewater by the railroad tracks, its roots clinging to the largest of three rocks, sea stacks, called The Three Graces.

Kayaks and sailboats passed by. Beachcombers wandered below. How a tree could grow and thrive like this was anyone’s guess: a seed dropped in a soil pocket on the outcrop by a bird, or maybe blown in by the wind.

Later, even after its greenery had been lost, it still stood, branches leaning one way as if to counterbalance the tilt of its trunk. In all, it was said to have graced the rocks for more than a century.

Now, after a recent windstorm, it’s no more.

And so a Highway 101 landmark bows to the winds of change.

Several years ago, my dad and I stopped in Garibaldi one drizzly morning to look for a gift for someone’s wedding at the Myrtlewood Factory Outlet. My small contribution at the check stand was a white-on-black vinyl sticker with the illustration “Moon Over Three Graces” by local artist Seasons Kaz Sparks.

The silhouette, which appears on mugs, sweatshirts and keychains, shows the rocks with their signature tree, and other shrubbery, under a watchful crescent moon.

Landmark as it was, the tree doesn’t have a common nickname. In a recent Facebook post, Sparks called it “Ophelia.” She also said she intends to offer The Three Graces drawing “forever, exactly as it is,” lamenting that the tree supported countless birds and “enchanted us all.”

So the tree that grew in Tillamook Bay lives on.