This headland, originally named Cape Lookout by English sea captain John Meares, with mapmakers ending up giving the name to another headland ten miles to the south. In 1857, it was decided to rename the original Cape Lookout than to correct the maps. Cape Meares gained its name for the Englishman.

Cape Meares Lighthouse

mtcorg, "Switching on the Lights - Lighthouses North Oregon," September 9, 2021

Line-of-sight along the Oregon coast and proximity to Tillamook Bay led to Congress approving money to construct the lighthouse, two keeper’s houses, a couple oil house, barn and a cistern. The First-order Fresnel lens from Henry-Lepaute firm in France shown out on the first day of 1890.

Thanks its placement atop two-hundred-foot cliffs, the lighthouse did not have to be very high. At only thirty-eight feet tall, it is Oregon’s shortest on the coast. The lens seen over 21 miles away.

The keeper’s homes set about 1,000 feet farther away and a little higher from the lighthouse – where the parking lot sits today. At first, supplies from Tillamook had to be rowed in across the bay to the north spit, but in 1893, a rough wagon road was built to connect with a county road in the village of Netarts to the south.

In 1903, the head keeper died on duty of pneumonia. His wife filled in for a few weeks before a new keeper showed up a month later.

The lighthouse went electric in 1934 and the oil houses demolished. After an automated beacon came in 1963, the lighthouse decommissioned – third and last of the north Oregon lighthouses to close. The tower was next, but locals were able to convince the Coast Guard to lease the building to Tillamook County a year later.

Vandals hit the abandoned lighthouse, stealing four prisms from the Fresnel lens. The State Parks Department took control in 1968. One of the prisms was recovered in a drug raid in Portland in 1984 and the other three eventually were returned.Two young men shot up the lantern room one night in 2010 with an estimated $500,000 in damage created. Caught a month later and the two pled guilty. The light on the beacon turned off 25 June 2014. GPS systems allowing people to know where they are in the sea without lights.

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