THE EIGHT STRANGERS must have been a little puzzled when they arrived in Astoria, in the fall of 1878. They’d been brought in at considerable expense from far away by the U.S. Lighthouse Board to work on a new lighthouse construction project. But now that they were finally here, they weren’t even allowed to go into town for a drink. They were whisked away, across the river onto the lonesome wilds of the Washington Territory, and put up in an empty lightkeeper’s house at Cape Disappointment.

So, where was the lighthouse they’d been hired to work on? All they knew was that it was on a small, rocky island. But where?

More than three weeks dragged by. Finally, when the seas were relatively calm, the revenue cutter Thomas Corwin arrived to take them to the job site. And an hour or so later, their eyes widened with horror as they beheld what they’d signed up to build.

Staring at the tiny speck of granite jutting out of the flying spray and foam, the workers now understood why their employer had been so secretive — and why it had been necessary to recruit them from far-distant cities that had never heard of Tillamook Rock.... (Tillamook Rock, Clatsop County; 1870s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511a.building-tillamook-rock-363.html)