A tiny community on Oregon’s north coast is proving you don’t have to have an urban setting and a big population to attract people passionate about living their best lives.
This year, residents in north Tillamook County will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the spring a determined band of locals saved the community pool and began the drive to form the North County Recreation District. Known locally as the NCRD, the Nehalem community center is dedicated to “enhancing the quality of life for everyone living in the district as well as visitors to the area.”
OREGON CULTURAL HUBS: An occasional series
The center, about 16 miles south of Cannon Beach, is based in the former Lower Nehalem Elementary School, built in 1920 and designed by Portland architect A.E. Doyle. Perched on a hill overlooking the town of 270, it serves residents in Nehalem and nearby towns of Manzanita and Wheeler with a 192-seat performing arts center and an art gallery that showcases a different artist each month, along with lectures, a book club, and an art club. The district also offers fitness classes such as yoga, a youth sports league, and maintains recreational facilities: a baseball field and four pickleball courts.
In case none of those ticks your boxes, the center also is home to talks by the Nehalem Valley Historical Society, Zumba, summer camps for kids, and — should there be an emergency — this is your place to go.
Along with marking the anniversary milestone, the NCRD later this year also will celebrate the opening of a new $16.4 million aquatics center, featuring a six-lane competition-sized pool and a warm-water therapy pool.
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“When we started this, it was the pool, a one-room fitness center, and a teen center operating only on weekends,” said Barbara McCann, executive director. “Now, we are the hub, and we are education, arts, wellness, and recreation.”
It all began with a tragedy nearly 100 years ago when two 14-year-old boys drowned while playing on logs in the Trask River. A year later, the pool opened at what was then Nehalem Lower Elementary School. So began the tradition of ensuring every child in the community had the opportunity to learn how to swim. In 1987, the school district stopped using the school but allowed the town to use it as a community center. Eight years later, the district announced that would end in the spring of 1995.
“It was just going to close, and the pool was just going to die,” McCann said. “I was here, I used the pool, the kids used the pool.” When students approached her to do something, McCann agreed, helping to raise $11,000 ($1,000 more than the $10,000 required) for a contract with the school district. In 1996, voters approved a ballot measure establishing the North County Recreation District. It has been surpassing expectations since.
Jane Knapp, who is in charge of Activities for Adults (“We can’t call it Adult Activities because it pops up as porn on the internet”), was in on the planning of the district.
“We were writing up the specs to turn the whole thing into the NCRD, and we were terribly proud of the fact that 1,000 people a year walked through our doors,” Knapp said, “and now it’s that many in a month.
“The fitness center at that point occupied one room and it started with a weight bench and a bicycle. They used to have a run out North Fork Road to raise money so we could buy more equipment. One year, Cycle Oregon came through and they made lunch for them, and that was how they bought the Universal weight machine.”
Prior to COVID, Knapp also led groups to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Performing Arts Center in Newport, to plays and concerts in Portland, and baseball games in Seattle. She also started Scone Friday. “I make scones and coffee and tea the first Friday of the month, and everybody comes, and you never know what’s going to come out of that.”
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Susan Dietsche’s grandfather bought property in nearby Manzanita in 1913. Her mother attended high school in Nehalem, and Dietsche, 85, bought her own property there in 1981. She’s involved in numerous offerings at the NCRD, including Great Decisions, “America’s largest discussion program on world affairs,” put on by the Foreign Policy Association. The program comes with a series of eight videos that groups watch and discuss. The 2024 series included topics on “NATO’s Future,” “Climate Technology and Competition,” and “Pandemic Preparedness.”
“It really draws people who are pretty educated and may know things about these subjects,” Dietsche said. “They have discussion questions for us in the report, and our own people contribute information that they know about the subject.”
About five years ago, when the NCRD group finished the Great Decisions topics, they came up with a new program they call “Great Discussions,” based on college course videos. “Sometimes it’s science, sometimes music, sometimes history,” Dietsche said. “One of the best we just finished was ancient South America, pre-Inca time. We had a wonderful one on evolution.”
Dietsche has her own theory about why the area around Wheeler, Nehalem, and Manzanita draws so many artists and intellectuals. “I think that the original people who came to Neahkahnie were college professors. The Portland public library had a house there that employees could use for vacations, and … lots of people who had connections with the Unitarian church came there. I think that is part of why the area has developed doing the arts and having college courses and some of the more intellectual things, even teaching all the kids to swim…. They thought it was their responsibility.”
The North Coast has been a favored escape for Oregonians nearly as long as Oregon’s been a state, but people from all over the country find their way there. Knapp, a scientist, moved to the area from Washington, D.C., in 1994 “because it was as far from D.C. as we could move.”
Artist Shirl Ireland moved to the coast in 2024 after flooding prompted her to leave her home and studio in Yellowstone. She discovered the “beautiful old school” when she stopped by to inquire about fitness classes and ended up joining the art group.
“It’s almost ridiculous how much goes on there,” Ireland said. “Everything is centered in that place … and what a way to re-energize your old school building.”
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Retired actor George Dzundza began visiting the Oregon Coast more than 30 years ago with his wife, who has family there. He got to know the NCRD when it offered the local performing group, Rising Tide Productions, a stage for Doubt, a play — previously rejected by another group — that centers around a priest who may or may not be a pedophile. Rising Tide has since produced numerous plays at the center, including Agnes of God and Seascape. Rehearsals began recently for Collected Stories by David Margulies to be staged in August. (A second community theater group, Riverbend Players, also calls the Performing Arts Center home. Its production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap opens Feb. 28.)
The old building is not without its shortcomings, said Dzundza. “It has a gym upstairs and sometimes during rehearsals all you can hear is noise. But it’s a lovely space. They’ve put money and time into making it a better place. I just take my hat off to them. I’m so glad it exists.”
And those are just the kind of encouraging words new manager Kenia Goodman needs to hear. She’s charged with sparking new life in the theater after COVID cost it both staff and audience members. “All of us have gotten more used to staying home,” Goodman said. “It’s harder to get people out. It’s definitely a challenge, especially because a lot of our audience is older. When it gets dark at 4, it’s tricky.”
She’s hoping to overcome that tricky bit by bringing in more variety and events that are shorter in duration. In coming months, the stage will host a comedian, a Latin American quartet, movie nights, and an improv comedy group that will perform and offer a class.
The NCRD soon will decommission the existing pool and prepare to open the new aquatic facility. The old pool space will be filled in, upgraded and repurposed, possibly to a multi-purpose room, McCann said. “There is going to be so much going on here; it’s amazing.”
But first there will be “legacy swims” at the 95-year-old pool (believed to be the oldest in operation on the West Coast) for the multi-generational families who have learned to swim there since 1930, said McCann.
“They have fond memories of their time spent swimming here,” she said. “These swims will give them an opportunity for a last dip. We’ve kept it alive with miracles, and the local people feel an ownership. There are still families who talk about grandfathers who dug it out with horse and plow. It is very much beloved.”
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