A storm tore open the roof of this massive Oregon landmark. Will anyone save it?

By SAMANTHA SWINDLER/ The Oregonian/OregonLive

When they were completed in 1943, Tillamook’s twin blimp hangars were marvels of wartime engineering.

Each structure was 175 feet tall, 1,072 feet long and nearly 300 feet wide — large enough that one hangar could house six football fields.

Constructed almost entirely from Oregon-harvested Douglas fir, the hangars were designed to house K-class Navy airships tasked with patrolling the West Coast during World War II. At the time, the U.S. Navy called the hangars the largest free-standing wooden structures in the world.

Each hangar comprised more than 10 million board feet of lumber — enough wood to build 279 three-bedroom homes. New York City’s Chrysler Building, laid on its side, could fit inside each one.

One of those giants, Hangar A, burned to the ground in 1992. The other, Hangar B, has loomed over the south end of Tillamook for more than 80 years, a mammoth landmark that houses the Tillamook Air Museum just outside the small dairy town on the Oregon coast.

Now, Hangar B’s future is uncertain.

On Dec. 18, a windstorm tore from the hangar’s metal roof a section roughly 200 feet long and 30 feet wide, exposing the interior to rain and the coastal elements. Preliminary estimates put the cost to repair the damage somewhere between $2.5 million and $6.5 million — money the Port of Tillamook Bay, which owns the hangar, does not have.

During an emergency meeting Jan. 5, port commissioners unanimously passed a resolution supporting preservation and repair of the hangar. But the resolution came with no funding attached.

“The fact is, we don’t have enough money to fix it, much less sustain it long-term,” said Port Commission President Jack Mulder. “We want to save the hangar, but we can’t do it alone.”

The resolution was, in essence, an SOS signal to the community. If a significant source of funding isn’t found soon, officials said, the hangar will be lost.

A wartime relic

Tillamook’s U.S. Naval Air Station was created to house eight airships along with administrative and residential quarters for some 600 Navy personnel during World War II. The station’s two blimp hangars were among 17 similar wooden hangars built across the country.

Five of those hangars remain today. Tillamook’s is the only one that was accessible to the public.

During the war, the station was home to two blimp squadrons that patrolled the coastline from California to the Canadian border.

After the base was decommissioned in 1949, the 1,600-acre property became primarily an airport and industrial park, managed since 1964 by the Port of Tillamook Bay.

Over the decades, the two hangars were repurposed for various business interests. Hangar A was being used to store hay when it was engulfed in flames in 1992.

Today, Hangar B is mainly known as the home of the now closed Tillamook Air Museum and its planes, many on loan from the Navy. The museum and its collection take up only half of the massive building — and it’s unclear what will happen to the collection if the museum never reopens.

The rest of the hangar is used by a mix of tenants, including Stimson Lumber, Pelican Brewing, a preschool and RV storage.

Those tenants have all been asked to leave, as the current building is unsafe. The hole in the roof is over the area used for RV and lumber storage. A large chunk of the metal roof remains precariously dangling across the slope of the hangar.

And the hole in the roof is just the latest in a series of maintenance needs for the building. It has long had leaks and roofing issues; some of the wood appears to have white mold; and one of the massive hangar doors is no longer functional.

“It does no good to patch your roof again when the whole thing needs to be replaced,” said Port Commissioner Donnie Jenck. “Either the funding comes through to do the whole thing, or we’re going to watch it disintegrate. I think a lot of people are going to be upset, but I don’t think they understand the reality of that building.”

The financial reality

According to port officials, the hangar and museum bring in about $600,000 a year in revenue and roughly $153,000 in annual profit — far short of what’s needed to maintain a structure of its size and complexity.

The port’s annual operating budget is about $9.9 million, including $2.5 million in federal grants. The port receives only about $60,000 a year in local tax revenue.

“We’ve been looking for years at ways to use the hangar in a way that can make it economically sustainable on its own, and we just have not found those solutions,” Mulder said.

The port primarily has an economic and industrial mission, and despite seeking business uses for the hangar, none of those has been successful. Tillamook’s relatively remote location makes it tricky to attract large airship or defense companies. The hangar itself needs too much work to be useful as a warehouse space or data center. The building is uninsured, and port officials say obtaining coverage in its current condition would be nearly impossible.

“If we’re talking about running the port board like a business … we can’t justify spending millions of dollars on the hangar because the hangar doesn’t make that much money,” Mulder said.

This was part of the reason, in 2013, when the port received $44 million in FEMA funding after its railroad washed out, it didn’t apply those funds to the hangar. Instead, the money was spent to make road repairs, upgrade water systems, and build up the industrial park that provides much of the port’s revenue today.

At that time, estimates to fully repair and preserve the hangar exceeded $20 million. While a full engineering study has not been done, some port officials estimate restoration could cost up to $50 million today.

“Functionally, it doesn’t matter whether it’s $20 million or $50 million,” Mulder said. “Either way, we don’t have that kind of money.”

What’s next?

Several potential paths forward were discussed during the port’s January meeting, none of them easy.

One option would be a countywide bond election for a local tax levy. Port Commissioner Bill Baertlein, a former CPA, shared rough “back of the envelope” numbers: A $20 million, countywide bond could cost homeowners about $33 a year for a $300,000 home.

“There’s no fairy godfather or godmother out there that’s going to give us $20 million to fix an old blimp hangar,” he said. “The federal government’s not doing that anymore. The state has no cash to hand out for these kinds of things. The only possible way would be for a local tax levy, and I really don’t see the community supporting a tax levy.”

But Port Commissioner Matt Mumford was more optimistic about going to voters.

“One of the main reasons that I joined the port board was to save the hangar,” Mumford said. “I’m excited about the bond measure. I think that could work.”

Another idea is dedicating part of Tillamook County’s transient lodging tax on hotel rooms to the hangar. That would be a decision made not by the port, but by the Tillamook County Commission. Last July, the port requested $500,000 in lodging tax funds for an engineering assessment of the hangar and the work needed. The port is still waiting for a decision from the county.

Over the last several years, port manager Michele Bradley has unsuccessfully sought Congressionally Directed Spending for the hangar. Since the December damage, she’s reached out to the area’s representatives in Congress about any funding options.

“ I’m throwing major spaghetti at the wall right now to see what some of these possibilities could be,” Bradley said.

In 2017, the port helped create the Friends of the Tillamook Air Museum, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the hangar. The group has raised about $80,000 so far — nowhere near enough to fund major repairs or even a study of what those repairs would cost.

“If they painted ‘Just Do It’ on it and Phil Knight came in with $50 million, the hangar would be saved,” said Friends President Dallas Adams. “But it’s going to need a lot of money.”

Port officials have also offered to sell the hangar for $1 to any entity willing and able to preserve it. But without an engineering study detailing what’s needed, they were not optimistic someone would take it on.

“ I think it’s time to pull off the Band-Aid and say goodbye,” Baertlein said. “It’s just a bad situation, and we’ve seen it coming. To the community, it’s going to be like losing a parent, I’m afraid.”

But Ian Johnson, the state’s deputy Historic Preservation Officer, wasn’t ready to plan the hangar’s funeral just yet.

“I’m not completely unhopeful about the possible success of a capital improvement campaign,” he said. “ I think there’s the potential for a large, broad-based capital campaign for something like this.”

He said there’s a significant interest in military history, and enthusiasts from that community, perhaps nationally, might rally to preserve the hangar.

Adams, meanwhile, is attempting to put together a “Tiger Team” to raise funds for the preservation effort.

Whether Hangar B survives may depend on whether the community — or someone beyond it — decides it’s worth saving before time and weather make the hangar’s closure permanent.

“Now people realize it could really be lost,” Adams said. “Maybe it takes a disaster to get people’s attention.”

• This story was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive on Jan. 16, 2026.