Southern Oregon Coast Region

The medallion at the center of this kiosk reads February 14, 1859, the day President Buchanan signed Oregon into the Union. Oregon did not hear for a month. The news went by telegraph to St. Louis and by stagecoach to San Francisco, and on March 10 the side-wheel steamer Commodore, later renamed Brother Jonathan, headed north with the official word. It docked at Portland on March 15, and the news reached Salem about thirteen hours later. The same ship, as Brother Jonathan, was wrecked off Crescent City in July 1865 with heavy loss of life.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shore Acres State Park — 9.3 mi
  A timber family's clifftop estate whose mansion burned three months after its mistress died, whose larger replacement the state could not keep, and whose gardens it did.
• Bandon — 20 mi
  A town at the mouth of the Coquille built near the site of an 1854 massacre, named for a town in Ireland, and burned in 1936 by the Irish gorse its founder planted.

More markers nearby

• The Hollering Place — 3.7 mi
• Coos Bay - Explore More — 3.7 mi
• Shifting Sands - Sand Dunes — 3.7 mi
• The Coos People — 3.7 mi