Tiffany isn’t the first sea lion to hit the streets of Lincoln City. Nearly a century earlier, that town belonged to Joe.
Authorities in Lincoln City spent Thanksgiving weekend trying to corral a pinniped they nicknamed Tiffany, a roving sea lion that came ashore from the Siletz River, eliciting memories of the town’s previously famous sea lion.
On Friday, March 24, 1933, three decades before Lincoln City would be incorporated, a large “battle-scarred” sea lion came ashore at the small community of Nelscott, which is about a mile north of where Tiffany was found.
The animal was captured by C.T. Dewey, who lassoed the pinniped and posed for a photo, according to articles from The Oregonian at the time and historical documents kept in Lincoln City. A team of men then dragged the sea lion into town, where they built a pen to contain it over the weekend. They named it Joe the Sea Lion.
“The residents of Nelscott, accustomed to watching the heads of sea lions bobbing about in the ocean, never before have been honored with a visit from one on their very own beach,” The Oregonian reported at the time. “Monday the people of Nelscott will escort him safely back to the ocean.”
The sea lion had other plans.
A front page article published in The Oregonian on March 25, 1933 tells the story of Joe the Sea Lion in Nelscott.Oregonian Archives
According to a detailed account by the staff of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, who dug through local records in Lincoln City, the sea lion broke free of its enclosure each night and wandered the streets of Nelscott before breaking into somebody’s home.
One historical document speaks of Joe scaling picket fences and winding up in somebody’s house or on their front porch, taking care not to crush flowerpots or gardens. Each morning, locals would round the sea lion up and take it back to the pen, where crowds of people had begun to gather.
M.T. Hoy, Oregon’s master fish warden at the time, visited the sea lion that Sunday, where he saw huge numbers of people crowding around it, primarily kids. He determined that the sea lion was sick (explaining why it couldn’t move very far and wasn’t returning to the ocean) and a danger to the people who had gathered, he told The Oregonian.
“A number of children stood or walked around within arm’s length of the helpless beast,” Hoy said. “If one had stumbled and fallen too close, I do not like to think what might have happened.”
While children marveled at Joe, adults were hungry for more information.
Dewey, who had captured the sea lion in the first place, declared that Joe was female, contrary to initial assumptions, though others maintained that it was male. Either way, the name stuck.
Joe was also thought to be Southern California’s famed Old Ben or Big Ben, a sea lion that was known to haunt the beaches of Avalon on Catalina Island. That was the opinion of renowned big game hunter Capt. E.A. Salisbury, at least, who told The Oregonian that the animal’s description “corresponds in nearly every particular with that of Big Ben.”
Known to fraternize with people at the edge of the water, Old Ben often begged for food and was said to be recognizable by the white spot and bump on his head. The beloved sea lion was allegedly shot and killed in 1914, though some locals claimed they saw the animal years later.
It’s virtually impossible that Joe and Old Ben were the same creature, however, due to the simple fact that sea lions only live about 15 to 23 years in the wild, according to marine biologists. One thing the two sea lions do have in common: the statues at their respective beaches, commemorating the impact they had on their communities.
Today, visitors to Nelscott Beach in Lincoln City can find a bronze statue of Joe the Sea Lion at the beach access point on Southwest 35th Street, dedicated in 2014. There, a plaque tells the story of Joe, and the popular local legend of how his reign in Lincoln City ended.
Some Nelscott residents at the time accused those living in nearby Taft of snitching to fish warden Hoy out of jealousy. After Hoy’s visit that Sunday, Joe was taken away from the town and released back into the wild.
“[Joe] probably would have accepted our hospitality for some time had not a small group of people in another resort town became jealous of the publicity we were getting and complained to the game warden, who came in a truck, loaded Joe into it, dumped him into the surf and forced him to swim away from our shores,” a document held by the North Lincoln County History Museum reads.
Locals reported that the sea lion swam back to shore before being repeatedly chased back into the waves. Joe might not have belonged in town, but he apparently didn’t want to live in the ocean either.
After being released, Joe “swam out a short distance, paused, and then, resolutely making up his mind, turned and came back to the beach,” according to an article by the Associated Press the next week. “Interested visitors still pass him clams.”
--Jamie Hale; jhale@oregonian.com; 503-294-4077; @HaleJamesB
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