The Tillamook Air Museum hangar with the Coast Range behind it
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Tillamook Air Museum reopens Oct. 29 under a new owner

ByCorey Lindqvist

Photo: Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ten months after a windstorm tore a hole in the roof of Hangar B, the Tillamook Air Museum opens its doors again on Thursday, Oct. 29. The grand reopening runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the hangar, 6030 Hangar Road, south of Tillamook.

The museum that reopens is the same in name but under new ownership. The Vintage Aviation Museum, a Utah nonprofit, took over both the hangar and the museum from the Port of Tillamook Bay this year, in a deal that rescued a building the port had struggled to afford to repair.

The trouble started Dec. 18, 2025, when a storm ripped away a section of roof roughly 200 feet long. The museum closed, and the port, which owned the hangar, was left looking at repair estimates that ran from $2.5 million to $6.5 million. For a small public port, that was a heavy lift on top of decades of deferred maintenance on one of the largest wooden structures ever built.

Port commissioners approved a term sheet with the Vintage Aviation Museum on Aug. 20. Under the agreement, as The Oregonian reported, the nonprofit bought the hangar for $1 and the museum’s assets for $20. In exchange it took on the repairs. The first phase, which includes taking down the section of roof left hanging after the storm, is estimated at about $450,000, far below the port’s figures, with work expected to wrap up around the end of the year or early January. The long-term restoration of the roof, doors and structure will take years and depend on fundraising.

Sean O’Brien, the Vintage Aviation Museum’s president and CEO, grew up in Oregon and once worked at the Tillamook museum as a docent. He has said keeping the local identity was never in question. “We know how important the identity and the branding is for the Tillamook Air Museum, so for us it was natural to make sure that identity was not lost,” he told KATU.

The low repair figure, O’Brien said, comes partly from contractors and suppliers willing to work with the nonprofit on price. “A lot of people are behind us that want to see this saved, so we have a lot of like-minded individuals that want to work with us and are willing to negotiate this pricing to help see this building saved, because ultimately it’s been in disrepair for far too many years,” he told the station.

A building that outlasted its twin

Hangar B went up in 1943 at what was then Naval Air Station Tillamook, built to shelter K-class blimps that patrolled the Pacific coast for Japanese submarines during World War II. It is framed almost entirely in Douglas fir and measures about 1,072 feet long, roughly 300 feet wide and about 175 feet tall, big enough that it is regularly described as one of the largest clear-span wooden buildings in the world.

There used to be two. Hangar A burned in 1992, and the air museum opened inside the surviving hangar in 1994. For three decades it has been one of Tillamook County’s better-known stops for travelers on U.S. 101, alongside the Tillamook Creamery a few miles north.

Visitors on Thursday will find a familiar lineup. The collection includes an F-14 Tomcat, the Navy fighter made famous by the original “Top Gun,” and an AV-8B Harrier II jump jet that arrived in August 2025, a few months before the storm. O’Brien’s group has said it plans to move most of its own aircraft from Utah to Tillamook over time, which would make the Oregon hangar the nonprofit’s main home.

Roof work will continue after the doors open, and the damaged south end of the hangar is expected to stay blocked off while it does. O’Brien has said the first priority was getting the exhibits and collections ready for visitors. Updates on hours after opening day are posted by the Port of Tillamook Bay and the museum.

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