Hundreds of thousands of people visit the Agate Beach Wayside on the north side of Newport each year. But did you know it used to be the site of two large hotels and a military school?
More than 130 years ago a grand hotel, named the Monterey, sat on the east end of where the parking lot is today. John Fitzpatrick, an Irish-born entrepreneur and fisherman, built the hotel in the late 1800s with milled lumber from Corvallis at a price of $75,000.
Fitzpatrick named the hotel for a Mexican-American War battle he participated in at Monterey, Calif. in the 1840s.
Fitzpatrick would die from pneumonia in 1894, about two years after the hotel was complete. His wife, Mary DuCheney, a Chinook Tribal member, and their eight children continued to operate the hotel.
In 1912, one of their children, Sarah Fitzpatrick, 25, was found dead in one of the hotel rooms by gunshot through the heart. There was never a determination as to who pulled the trigger. Soon after Sarah’s death, the Fitzpatrick family sold the hotel to Joseph A. Hill, who repurposed it as a private military academy and hotel and renamed it Ocean Hill House.
During World War I, the military built a trestle over Big Creek for a logging railroad for its Spruce Division. This construction is visible in the background of a 1918 photo of Ocean Hill House and the tents were likely for the workers. That part of the valley has since been filled in for the construction of U.S. Highway 101.
The hotel changed hands several times through the years until it was torn down in 1933 and replaced with cottages and a service station. In 1969, the state of Oregon purchased the 18-acre property and created the day-use facility that it is today.
- Historical photos and text provided by the Lincoln County Historical Society in a partnership with YachatsNews. To learn more about the society and local history, visit its website here. A sampling of historic images from the LCHS collection can be seen at OregonDigital.org
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