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Cape Meares

cape

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ1419680
Source-derived summary

Cape Meares is a small headland on the Pacific coast in Tillamook County, Oregon, United States. The cape forms a high steep bluff on the south end of Tillamook Bay, approximately five miles (8 km) northwest of the city of Tillamook. Much of the cape is part of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department-administered Cape Meares State Scenic Viewpoint with three miles of hiking trails, which includes Cape Meares Light and the Octopus Tree. The cape is named after John Meares, a British explorer.

Geography

Immediately north of the cape is the community of Cape Meares, next to Cape Meares Lake. Cape Meares beach extends north of the community of Cape Meares, along a sand spit, or peninsula, that encloses Tillamook Bay. The peninsula is alternatively known as Bayocean, after a popular upscale resort town that occupied the beach in the early 20th century, until beach erosion began to destroy the town beginning in the 1930s. Today, no significant remnant of the resort town remains on the beach.

Immediately south of Cape Meares is Short Beach.

Cape Meares State Scenic Viewpoint

The scenic viewpoint is the location of the "Octopus Tree", a large, multi-trunked Sitka Spruce with a trunk circumference of about 50 feet.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cape Meares” is cape. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cape, Meares and cape, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 204-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cape, Meares and cape is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “cape” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1419680. Authority coordinates are 45.486, -123.978. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cape Meares”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cape Meares primary sources, Cape Meares archive and Cape research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cape Meares” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.