Ear: Getaways

Grant McOmie‘s program “Grant’s Getaways” on KGW.com often visits sites on the North Coast. His July 7 episode, “Finding the Fort” takes place at Fort Stevens State Park in Hammond, where McOmie’s film crew took a tour of Battery Mishler, the fort’s only underground battery (a screenshot is shown).

Battery Lyman Mishler, built in the 1890s, housed two 10-inch guns that were once open to the sky. Each one was mounted on a carriage that would disappear after firing, hiding the guns behind fort walls. The guns could fire massive 617-pound shells 9 miles, and it took coordinated teams of 35 to operate each gun.

“It was choreographed,” park historian David Lindstrom explained. “You had to be at your station for a task at a specific time, and nobody else could be there but you … The concussion from each firing was amazing! When the mortar battery fired, the concussion would rip your pant leg seam. The men didn’t wear earplugs, either. You could feel the pressure of the blast across your entire body.”

The tour gives you a “feel for the grit of the work and what the environment was like for the soldiers down here,” park ranger John Koch noted. “You can’t duplicate this anywhere else — you can only get it at Fort Stevens. You’re not going to see this anywhere in the United States — only here in Oregon.”