Lights, Sunset, Action

by Will Yurman

12.09.2024

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My advice. 

Get there early for the opening act.

Think of The Beatles opening for Roy Orbison in 1963, or imagine Lady Gaga opening for Taylor Swift. You don’t want to be that person who only shows up for the headliner.

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, top billing at Shore Acres State Park goes to the Holiday Lights. But if you get there early, and the sun and the tides cooperate, or honestly, even if they don’t, walk out to the cliff’s edge. Watch and listen to the waves crash on the rocks, the sound is as impressive as the sight. Spend the time to watch the sky turn from blue to pink to yellow and finally black.

Zack Blalack and his family drove down from Eugene for the lights but walked out to the water first. “Watching the waves crash on the rocks and the big sprays are always fun,” he said. “Definitely worth the price of admission.” 

It’s not a fair comparison. Worse than apples to oranges. More like comparing a pack of wolves to a perfectly groomed golden retriever. “It’s different. Right? I mean, nature has its own beauty. Lights are beautiful by themselves, but nature is unpredictable. And much more chaotic than, you know, straight or even a curved strings of lights,” Blalack said. 

Stay for the entire set and then it’s a short walk up the path and through the parking lot to the main act. 325,000 lights, give or take, draw more than 50,000 people each year between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Eve, according to the Friends of Shore Acres. 

Pelicans fly across the sky. A grey whale, more blue than grey, rises from the sea(or, more precisely, the ground). Dolphins leap, and there are jellyfish, crabs, dragonflies, and sasquatch in orange, blue, purple, pink, red, and white, along the paths through the formal gardens on what was once the Simpson estate. 

Louis Simpson began building his first mansion on the bluff in 1907 at what is now Shore Acres State Park as a Christmas present for his wife Cassie. She died in 1921, the same year the mansion was destroyed in a fire. Simpson built a second mansion for his second wife, Lela, in 1927. 

The Simpsons sold the mansion to the state of Oregon in 1942. And in 1948 the state decided it wasn’t possible to maintain or restore the mansion and razed it. The gardener’s cottage is the only original building still standing. 

In the 1970s, the gardens were restored, and in 1987, the Friends of Shore Acres started the holiday light tradition with 6,000 lights. 

Volunteers start decorating in October, and this year, for 34 days, they will sell souvenirs in the gift shop and hand out cookies and warm spiced cider in the former gardener’s cottage.

Anna Cole and her husband, Michael, greeted visitors to the cottage. The two-story building is decorated a bit like you’d imagine the inside of a gingerbread house.  Multiple Christmas trees, wreaths, lights, and ribbon fill each cranny and nook. 

The Coles have volunteered since 2009. And the yearly event serves double duty for them. “We just really have enjoyed connecting with our community, having a different way of, like, giving back. It is a gem of our community. People look up to it. People look forward to it,” she said. 

And the couple has six kids, including seven-year-old twins. “It has literally become the one night of the year that we get a babysitter, and it’s like our little date night,” she said. 

“It’s just neat to, like, come and be a part of just such a magical event.”

The Holiday Lights show continues through New Year’s Eve. A parking reservation is required and costs $5 per car. More information is here.

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