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    Oregon Surfing: North Coast
    Oregon Surfing: North Coast
    Oregon Surfing: North Coast
    Ebook170 pages55 minutes

    Oregon Surfing: North Coast

    By Scott Blackman and Sandy Blackman

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    About this ebook

    Surfing culture began in Portland, Seaside, Cannon Beach, and Pacific City in the early 1960s. Influenced by surf music and a few California surfers, a handful of skin divers and adolescent boys yearned to engage in the sport. In the beginning, surfing was illegal along the beachfronts of Seaside and Cannon Beach. Answering the siren call, locals took to the beaches, while others from around Oregon, Washington, and California found their way to isolated spots along the Northern Oregon coast. The early surfers were not intimidated by their lack of knowledge, poor equipment, or the unpredictable waves. Instead, surfing caught on in the cold waters of Oregon. Experience the early days of Oregon surfing through the pioneer surfers' stories and vintage photographs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateFeb 29, 2016
    ISBN9781439655276
    Oregon Surfing: North Coast
    Author

    Scott Blackman

    Scott and Sandy Blackman have lived their entire lives along the Oregon coast. Scott, a pioneer surfer, has been photographing the evolving surf culture for 50 years. Sandy is a successful writer and storyteller. Together, the Blackmans have become the historians of Oregon surfing's pioneer years. Their first book, Oregon Surfing: Central Coast, and their Facebook site, Oregon Surfing: Past and Present, document the early history of the sport in the state.

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      Book preview

      Oregon Surfing - Scott Blackman

      Coast.

      INTRODUCTION

      Oregon surfing began in 1962 at Indian Beach within the Ecola State Park, north of Cannon Beach. Seaside and Cannon Beach had laws prohibiting the use of floatable devices at the beaches within the city limits. This law prevented surfing until Dana Williams sought permission from the Seaside City Council to allow surfing from Avenue U to the Tillamook Headlands. Cannon Beach lifted its restrictions in 1967. Once the laws were changed, surfing began in earnest, first at Seaside’s Cove in 1963 and at the Point in 1964. Seaside became the hotbed of surfing starting in the 1960s and continues today. Producing a world-class left along the West Coast, it attracted many surfers who have stayed and spread out along the northern coast.

      Credit must be given to the various surfers, board makers, and surf shops who helped advance the sport of surfing in Oregon during the early days. Dana Williams, more than any other individual, was in the right place at the right time. Williams, a San Diego surfer finishing his last hitch in the military, was assigned to Tongue Point, near Astoria, in the early 1960s. He discovered young Seaside teenagers who wanted to learn how to surf. He mentored and influenced many over the years, organizing the Seaside Surfing Association (SSA) in 1963.

      From Portland, Dick Wald, a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie who was married with two small children, left skin diving and started surfing. In January 1964, Dana and Dick recognized the Point wave. Dick returned and is credited with being the first to surf the Point in October 1964. The Point was a high quality wave that broke to the rider’s left. Dick encouraged others to surf the Point, and many were soundly thrashed or damaged their boards on the rocky beach. Leashes on boards were not invented until the early 1970s. Gary Hansen, a Seaside High School student, surfed with Wald and is credited with being the first local to surf the Point. Other locals began to surf it, and the word spread about the Point. Soon surfers from around Oregon, Washington, California, and Hawaii came to surf the challenging left.

      As surf clubs began to form, surf contests became popular in the mid-1960s. Seaside’s first contest was held at the Cove on February 20, 1966. It was sponsored by OSD Sea Lions, a local skin-diving club. The Seaside riots during Labor Day weekend in 1963–1965 inadvertently contributed to surf contests. The city fathers, wanting to offer alternatives to rioting, worked with the SSA members to sponsor surf contests during Labor Day weekend for several years starting in 1966. Soon, other surf contests were being held at Seaside’s Cove, Indian Beach, Short Sands, and Pacific City that were sponsored by surf clubs, surf shops, and organizations along the North Coast. Surf contests faded after the early 1970s in the Seaside area. Yearly surf contests in Pacific City started up again with Bob Ledbetter in 1998 and continue today with Moment Surf Company co-owners Jeff Mollencop and Ben Johnson.

      Board makers began to gravitate to Seaside. The first two notable ones in the early 1960s were Jim Sagawa and Bob Jensen. Sagawa moved to Oregon from Hawaii to attend dental school at Oregon Health and Science University and made boards in Portland. His boards were called SAG, an abbreviation of his last name. Sagawa was a Point rider with Dick Wald in the early days. Bob Jensen, a board maker for Morey-Pope and Gordon and Smith, brought his two young sons and wife from Southern California. Living up a remote logging road outside Seaside, Jensen made boards and glassed them in his home. A 1960s Jensen board won at a raffle by the Ter Har family has been on display for five decades at their Seaside clothing store. It has never been used.

      Many surf shops along the North Coast have come and gone over the last 50 years, but three of them are worth noting. The very first surf shop in Seaside was owned and operated by brothers Jim and Bill Theiring of Coos Bay. The shop, located on Broadway Street, was open from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend for three summers between 1964 and 1966. Bill would close the Seaside Surf Shop and reopen it in Coos Bay the rest of the year using the same name. As early entrepreneurs of surfing, the Theiring brothers owned surf shops in Coos Bay, Seaside, Portland, and Santa Cruz, California, in the 1960s. Jim lived in and ran the Santa Cruz surf shop, sending boards to Bill, who ran the shops in Oregon. The Theirings were among of the first to sponsor surf movies. They financed Bruce Brown’s visit to Oregon to show his movie Endless Summer at Portland’s Benson High School and at Oregon’s first surf contest in Coos Bay, in June 1965.

      Santa Cruz surfer Art Spence, Seasider Jerry Harrington, and Portlanders Dan Matthews and Tim Foley became known as the Tillamook Head crew. Beginning in the late 1960s, the crew lived together and ran their surfing business intermittently in Nehalem Valley and Seaside. California surfer Bill Barnfield joined them before moving to Hawaii to become a well-known board maker. Lanny Shuler joined the group in 1971. The surfers who came together under this logo made boards that were experimental at a time when the surfing industry was moving

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