Great Tsunami of 1700

The board points to the oral traditions; scientists came to them late. Ruth Ludwin, a University of Washington seismologist, and her colleagues searched archived Native accounts and in 2005 mapped forty stories from the Cascadia coast that tell of shaking or of floods from the sea, some framed as Thunderbird driving its talons into Whale and being dragged to the ocean floor. Nine, recorded between 1860 and 1964, likely describe January 1700 directly, and their counted generations point to about that date. Two tell of a grandparent who saw a survivor of the flood.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Depoe Bay — 8.3 mi
  A six-acre harbor reached through a crack in the basalt, on land allotted in 1894 to a Tututni man the agency knew as Depot Charley.
• Yaquina Head — 17 mi
  A basalt headland with Oregon's tallest lighthouse at the tip and, on its south side, an old quarry the sea was let back into.

More markers nearby

• Yaquina Bay — 21 mi
• Grand Ronde Indian Reservation — 22 mi