Tierra del Mar is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Tillamook County,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, United States, located on the

Oregon Coast The Oregon Coast is a coastal region of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to its west and the Oregon Coast Range to the east, and stretches approximately from the California state border in the south to the Columbia ...

, about south of Tillamook and north of Pacific City and Cape Kiwanda, along Sandlake Road, west of

U.S. Route 101 U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101 (US 101), is a major north–south highway that traverses the states of California, Oregon, and Washington on the West Coast of the United States. It is part of the United States Numbered Highway Syst ...

History

The community was named by Marie F. Pollock, who began selling lots in the development in 1935. ''Tierra del mar'' is

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

for "land by the sea". One of the streets in the community is named after Pollock. In 1990, author

Ralph Friedman Ralph Friedman (June 3, 1916 – June 3, 1995) was an American author, best known for his books about Oregon, which included travel guides and popular histories. Born and raised to an impoverished Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family in Chicago, ...

described Tierra del Mar as a "growing toss of houses".

Projected location of Facebook submarine cable

Beginning in 2019, Tierra del Mar residents voiced opposition to

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

subsidiary Edge Cable Holdings, USA's planned transpacific cable crossing to Asia, known as the JUPITER Cable System. Tillamook County approved the plan in January 2020. According to Facebook, Tierra del Mar is a likely site for a new branch of a fibre optic undersea telecommunications cable. Facebook's data center in

Prineville, Oregon Prineville is a city in and the county seat, seat of Crook County, Oregon, United States. It was named for the first merchant to establish businesses in the present location, Barney Prine. The population was 10,429 at the United States Census 2010 ...

, could be connected more easily with Japan and the Philippines with the cable. The cable is to be wholly owned by Facebook and will split off from the 60

Tbps TBPS (''tert''-butylbicyclophosphorothionate) is a bicyclic phosphate convulsant. It is an extremely potent GABA receptor antagonist. See also * TBPO *IPTBO IPTBO (isopropylbicyclophosphate, also IPPO) is a bicyclic phosphate convulsant. It i ...

JUPITER cable that has its main branch ashore in

Hermosa Beach, California Hermosa Beach (, Spanish for "Beautiful") is a beachfront city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Its population was 19,728 at the 2020 U.S. Census. The city is located in the South Bay region of the Greater Los Angeles area; ...

and is owned by telecommunication firms in the Philippines (

PLDT PLDT, Inc., formerly known as the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (), is a Philippine telecommunications, internet and digital service company. PLDT is one of the Philippine's major telecommunications providers, along with Globe Te ...

), Hong Kong (

PCCW Global HKT Limited (), also known as Hong Kong Telecom (), is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Hong Kong. It has a dominant position in fixed-line, mobile, IDD and broadband services in Hong Kong. HKT Group is a subsidiary of PCCW ...

), and Japan ( NTT, which is building the JUPITER cable system) as well as SoftBank Telecommunications,

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

, and Facebook. Edge Cable Holdings, USA, purchased a beachfront property about the size of 10

tennis court A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both Types of tennis match, doubles and singles matches. A variet ...

s for $495,000 from former University of Oregon football player Joey Harrington in 2018. From Tierra del Mar, the submarine cable, once ashore, could connect underground with another cable in Pacific City. On April 28, 2020, the drill hit an unexpected area of hard rock. The drill bit seized and the drill pipe snapped 50 feet below the seafloor. The crew was able to recover some of the equipment, but left the rest in the hole. Some of pipe, the drill head, and of

drilling fluid In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also known as drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth. Used while drilling oil and natural gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, drilling fluids are also use ...

remain in the hole. Facebook has no plans to retrieve the equipment. Edge Cable Holdings notified the county of the accident on 5 May, but did not explicitly mention the abandoned equipment. That information emerged at a meeting with state officials on June 17.Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon coast seafloor

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Tho ...

, July 13, 2020

References

External links

* * {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Oregon Unincorporated communities in Tillamook County, Oregon