Tillamook Air Museum

The north Oregon coast is the homeland of the Tillamook people, a Salish-speaking nation who lived along these bays and beaches, fishing the rich estuaries and harvesting the shellfish of the tidelands. The town, the county, and the bay all carry a version of their name, and their descendants are part of the Native community of the region today. The dairy pastures and the wartime base were laid over a much older human landscape.

As the Second World War spread to the Pacific, the Navy worried about enemy submarines prowling the coastal shipping lanes. Its answer, in part, was the blimp, a slow, long-endurance airship that could loiter over convoys and watch for submarines below. To base these airships on the Oregon coast, the Navy built Naval Air Station Tillamook and, in 1942 and 1943, raised two immense hangars to house them.

Because wartime demand had made steel scarce and precious, the hangars were framed in wood. Hangar B, the first completed, went up in 1943 and swallowed an almost unimaginable quantity of lumber, more than two million board feet, supplied by dozens of mills across the region. Its twin, Hangar A, was built with wartime speed in a matter of weeks. Together they could shelter a squadron of the Navy's K-class blimps, each airship more than two hundred feet long.

After the war the base was decommissioned, and its purpose faded. Hangar A burned to the ground in a spectacular fire in 1992, leaving Hangar B standing alone. Two years later the surviving hangar was given new life as the Tillamook Air Museum, and the great wooden vault that once cradled airships became a home for historic aircraft instead.

The numbers strain belief. Hangar B stretches well over a thousand feet in length, is nearly three hundred feet wide, and rises more than fifteen stories to the crown of its arched roof, all of it framed in wood without interior columns to break up the space. It is routinely counted among the largest freestanding clear-span wooden buildings in the world.

That single-span interior is what makes it so overwhelming to stand in. There are no rows of posts, no dividing walls, just one vast, ribbed wooden ceiling curving overhead and an open floor that once held airships longer than a city block. The doors alone are giants, sized to let a fully inflated blimp pass through.

The wooden construction, forced on the builders by wartime steel shortages, turned out to be the museum's great inheritance. Steel hangars of the era have mostly been scrapped, but this timber structure endures, and the very material that made it a make-do wartime solution is what makes it a rare and beautiful survivor today.

The museum's collection centers on military and vintage aircraft displayed across the hangar floor, with the planes rotating over time as some depart and others arrive. The mix leans toward the machines of the mid-twentieth century, warplanes and classic aircraft set against the astonishing backdrop of the timber roof.

Outside, the setting is pure Tillamook County. This is dairy country, green with pasture and dotted with cows whose milk built the town's famous creamery, all of it kept lush by the heavy coastal rains rolling in off the Pacific.

The ocean is only minutes to the west. The Three Capes area, Cape Meares with its old lighthouse, Cape Lookout reaching far out into the surf, and Cape Kiwanda's sandstone headland, strings together some of the most dramatic scenery on the Oregon coast, and Tillamook Bay's estuary draws great numbers of shorebirds and waterfowl, making the region as rich for birdwatching as it is for history.

Spring greens the pastures and brings migrating birds to Tillamook Bay, with mild weather that pairs the indoor museum nicely with the reawakening coast, though showers are frequent.

Summer is the coast's peak season, drier and warmer, and the museum makes a fine change of pace from the beaches, with the sea and the Three Capes drives an easy add-on to the day.

Fall brings quieter roads, storm-watching weather beginning to build on the coast, and the museum's sheltered interior a welcome refuge when the rain sweeps in.

Winter is wet and often stormy on this coast, which makes a giant, weatherproof hangar a genuinely appealing place to spend a gray afternoon, and the dramatic surf just to the west is at its most powerful.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.