Toledo

In the upstairs common area of the Wildwood Hotel in Willamina there's this great map of Oregon from around the 1920s or so. Pretty much the only thing similar to today's maps and that old map on the wall is the basic outline of the state. But counties are shaped differently if they're there at all, roads are either twice as curvy or just missing, and the City of Toledo is about six times the size of neighboring Newport. I think that gigantic mill was built around that time, then add the railroad and the port there and Toledo might have been the most bustling metropolis on the Oregon Coast for a decade or two. The photo up there is from 1906, but most of the cool buildings downtown that still stand seem to be from the 1920s, like the Yaquina Bay Hotel. That place looks like it has some stories. The whole downtown area there is filled with antique shops and a cafe or two--definitely worth a visit. I could live there.
It was a 1997 Benchmark Atlas of Oregon that brought me to Toledo the first time. My friend Brendan was babysitting his mother's convertible so we decided to head out to the beach "the long way." The long way, in this case turned out to be a series of logging roads and two-tracks that looked much more passable in my atlas. We were so close to the bay there at Toledo that we could smell the mill, but someone had blocked the road with an earthen berm. After high-centering on said berm because we were 22-year-old college studens that didn't know any better, we walked down to Toledo and flagged down the first pickup we saw to help us get unstuck. I'm always getting a car stuck somewhere, and each time it seems that I find the same stereotypical logger-type person to help out. He sighs, shakes his head, tells me how much of an idiot I am, and then won't take any money for his troubles. Every town in Oregon with a population of less than 3000 must have like a dozen of those guys.
Toledo Mayor Rod Cross is, as he put it, difficult to get in contact with during basketball season. After a couple of emails and a few phone calls to City Hall, I luckily met him in Salem at the OMA and he autographed our map.
13 down, 229 to go.