Let’s back track a little. Cutler City, site of our aforementioned beach house, is at the far south end of the “Ten Miracles Miles” known as “Lincoln City” (a made-up name used to designate the small towns of Ocean Lake, Delake, Nelscott, Taft and Cutler City, which became as one in March of 1965). Historically the land belonged to the native people, of course. White people claimed, sometimes purchased, land along the coast starting in the 1870’s. Development was sparse and occasional for many years though, as there was no access point from Portland or the valley until 1927. Cutler City though was part of an allotment belonging to a Siletz tribe couple whose grandson Charley DePoe sold the land to George and Mary Ann Cutler in 1913. They immediately established the Cutler Town Site and sold lots…1st, 2nd and 3rd streets (present day Ebb, Fleet and Galley).
Early houses here like ours were little fishing shacks thrown on the sand. When the road came through in 1927, building picked up…and then a post-war boom in the late 1940’s. It was always a working person’s town. Always.
We are preservationists of a sort. We wrote and established an historic district in Salem. We understand gentrification, and have watched it here in Cutler City as affordable housing for working people has been scooped up by people from “away”…people like us who found the ultimate luxury of living an hour and 15 minutes door to door from the beach. We love this little burg. We have suppressed all urges to make THIS an historic district. We have tried to honor our full-time neighbors, and they in turn have been good neighbors to us.
The houses are close together…
and in all these years we have never complained. As I look at the “comments” from my last post, and think about Cutler City and our current situation, I maintain that it is right for me to be mad at Tim. He has owned his house for almost 30 years. His parents lived here…in fact his Mom was living here when we bought our house (and she was a GREAT gardener). He knows that this is a neighborhood of small and nicely kept cottages. It isn’t necessary for a house to look like this just because people don’t have much money…
when you could do this…
But of course we are lucky. We have a back secluded patio…
we just three steps from Josephine Young park (formerly Gibb’s Point)…where today the fog was rolling in and the Bay had disappeared…
and though the Kernville Steak House is a total loss…
Allen Black is going to rebuild the Crab Pot here in Cutler. Though it will never look like this again…
it will be fun to watch something new arise from the ashes.
On The Way 
Your blog is always a well thought out and well written little gem. Thank you for sharing.
the serendipitous thing is that your cutler city posts had us researching cutler city, and now you add more to what we discovered. is that roger at the crab pot? and as for your sorrows about the house ‘gone to the dogs’, as one used to say in my neck of the woods, you have every right to feel angry and even depressed looking at what the little cottage has become, is becoming. i know we would both feel that way.
My 2nd great grandma is Mary Ann Cutler . Some folks have stated that George and Mary had a son named Arthur . He was Georges son . Mary Ann was married to my 2nd great grandpa George Coleman . They had my great grandma Jennie . Mary Ann left George Coleman to marry George Cutler .