Yaquina Bay

Before the reservation was cut in two, its oysters had already started a small war. In December 1863 the Siletz agent, Ben Simpson, gave Winant and Company an exclusive permit to work the beds, hoping to keep other outsiders off the reservation; the company paid the tribes a royalty of $1.15 a bushel and sold the Olympias in San Francisco for ten dollars. Ludlow and Company sent Captain Richard Hillyer to take oysters without paying, claiming American waters were free to Americans. He was detained, appealed to the army's commander in San Francisco, and sailed off with his cargo.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Yaquina Bay For millennia, the rich plant and animal life around Yaquina Bay sustained Yaqona tribal people. In 1855, President Pierce set aside these homelands among 1.1 million acres along the coast as a reservation for western Oregon tribes. By the 1860s, the abundant native oyster beds caught the attention of San Francisco-based oyster firms and illegal encroachment by settlers increased. The town of Oysterville was established in 1863 and a wagon road from the Willamette Valley in 1864. This political pressure for fishing and trade led President Johnson to sidestep Congress and carve the reservation in two, opening Yaquina Bay and the surrounding 200,000 acres to settlers. Overharvest quickly depleted the oyster beds, and Oysterville disappeared with them. Restoration efforts returned oysters to the bay, assisted by Yaqona descendants in the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Yaquina Head — 3.8 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.
• Depoe Bay — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Great Tsunami of 1700 — 21 mi
• Central Oregon Coast Region — 22 mi