This is an image I created using a technique known as HDR and I use Photomatix exclusively for all my HDR work. The weather conditions on the coast were the worst I had seen in years. It was the same day the Tsunami was suppose to hit the Oregon coast.
The area got the name from a fur trader named John Meares. He saw the headland and tried to cross over the bar into the Columbia River. When he missed, he named the area Cape Disappointment. This area has become known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Originally, locals cut the tops of trees and used a white flag to create a daymark. At night they would set trees on fire to mark the entrance. By 1848, the Government agreed that a lighthouse was needed, but it would still be almost another eight years before a lighthouse was built.
One of the keepers, Joel Munson is credited with organizing a lifesaving crew at the lighthouse. He rebuilt a wooden lifeboat of a foundered ship that would be used by the crew. Later, the Government would create a permanent lifesaving station at nearby Fort Canby. Initially, the lighthouse was outfitted with a first-order Fresnel lens. This was used in the lighthouse until the North Head Lighthouse was built in 1898.
The U.S. Coast Guard still has a station at Cape Disappointment and monitors distress calls from mariners. The Cape Disappointment lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in Washington State and is one of the oldest standing structures in the Pacific Northwest.
