Tillamook Bay’s South Jetty Is Rebuilt After $55 Million, Three-Summer Repair
Photo: born1945 from Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
For the commercial fishermen, charter skippers and Coast Guard crews who cross the Tillamook Bay bar, the rocks matter more than almost anything else on the coast. This fall, after three summers of work, the south side of that entrance is whole again.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District marked the completion of $55.1 million in repairs to the Tillamook Bay South Jetty at a ribbon-cutting at Barview Jetty County Park on Oct. 8. Contractor Trade West Construction finished placing stone in mid-September, and crews had demobilized and restored the work area by the end of the month, according to the Tillamook Headlight Herald.
What the jetties do
Tillamook Bay opens to the Pacific through a gap between two rubble-mound jetties, with Barview and the Port of Garibaldi on the north side and Kincheloe Point at the tip of Bayocean Spit on the south. Together the jetties absorb the force of incoming waves, stabilize the channel and make the entrance more predictable for boats, the Corps says. The bay’s commercial and recreational fleets, along with the Coast Guard station at Garibaldi, all depend on that entrance.
Pacific storms gradually knock stones loose and wear jetties down. When that happens, the bar can become rougher and shoaling can worsen. The south jetty, originally built in the 1970s, had lost large stones to wave action before the repair project began.
Three seasons of rock
The work was done in stages, the Headlight Herald reported. Crews repaired a 600-foot section at the jetty’s root in 2024, then an 800-foot section near its head in 2025. This year they rebuilt the 350-foot head itself, the part that takes the worst of the ocean.
According to the Corps, Trade West placed 6,168 stones weighing a combined 115,000 tons. The rock came from several quarries and was trucked to the Port of Garibaldi, barged across the bay to Kincheloe Point and hauled out along the jetty, where a temporary road was built on top of the structure to reach the outer sections. The individual stones ranged from about 60 pounds to 48 tons.
“The largest stones at the jetty’s ocean-facing tip weigh up to 48 tons, and that’s by design,” Colter Bennett, the Corps’ project engineer, said in the agency’s release. “The type of rock, its size, and how it’s placed all matter when you’re building something that has to stand up to the Pacific year after year.”
The project was designed to keep the jetty functioning for about 50 years, the Headlight Herald reported. Heidi Moritz, a coastal engineer with the Portland District, led design and engineering.
How it was paid for
Oregon’s congressional delegation secured $62 million for Tillamook Bay jetty work in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, plus another $2 million in later appropriations, according to the Headlight Herald. The south jetty work follows roughly $9 million in repairs to parts of the north jetty, completed in 2022. Combined, the two projects represent about $64 million in construction, the Corps said.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who attended the ceremony with U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and a representative of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, likened the long fight for funding to the Trojan War. “You can’t have big-league economic growth with little-league infrastructure,” he said, as quoted by the Headlight Herald.
Why it matters on the water and ashore
Neil Maunu, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, said at the event that fishing crews, seafood processors and local businesses all depend on the channel. “Safe and reliable navigation keeps commerce moving and supports jobs on the water and on shore,” he said in the Corps’ release.
Garibaldi Port Commission President Val Folkema joined the officials in cutting the ribbon. For a small port whose economy turns on charter fishing, commercial landings and visitors, a dependable bar crossing is basic infrastructure.
What could come next
The jetties are only part of the picture. In a letter read at the ceremony, Merkley said he was preparing to push legislation to establish a stepped navigation channel between the jetties, which would mean regular dredging to reduce shoaling and make crossing the bar less dangerous, the Headlight Herald reported. Wyden and Bonamici told the paper they would support similar funding.
That proposal has not been funded. For now, the Corps’ Portland District continues to maintain the bay as one of the 12 shallow-draft harbors and 12 large jetty systems it oversees in the region.
Boaters planning to cross the Tillamook bar should still check conditions before heading out. The Coast Guard posts bar restrictions and closures, and the National Weather Service issues bar forecasts for the Oregon coast.
Sources
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, “USACE completes $55-million repair project at Tillamook South Jetty,” Oct. 15, 2026: nwp.usace.army.mil
- Tillamook Headlight Herald, “South jetty complete,” Oct. 12, 2026: tillamookheadlightherald.com
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