N. Oregon Coast Rescue: Lost Boy Beach Lives Up to Its Name and Example of Warning

Published 09/17/2026 at 9:55 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Oceanside, Oregon) – If ever there was a bad idea just standing there and tempting people, it's Lost Boy Beach at Oceanside. They call it that for a reason, and it again lived up to its name when three youth went beyond the usual boundaries of the tiny north Oregon coast burgh this week (Netarts-Oceanside Fire District).

Lost Boy Beach lies on the other side of the northern edge of Tunnel Beach, that somewhat hidden beach found through the tunnel. If you walk to the edges of that area and to where you can go no more, on the other side of that headland sits Lost Boy Beach. There is, after all, Lost Boy Cave right there at the outcropping.

Netarts-Oceanside Fire District just posted these photos and only a brief bit of text about the incident. The full story is not known – and really, the details don't matter. Just the photos alone are a reminder of numerous things not to do on the coastline.

All that firefighters said about it was:

“3 visitors became stranded on Lost Boy Beach. Thank you to the Volunteers of Netarts-Oceanside Fire District, Tillamook County Emergency Communications District - Tillamook 911 and US U.S. Coast Guard Station Tillamook Bay.”

Between that, the photos, the history of that beach and the name, you actually don't need a lot more. It's all cause for various warnings and reminders, however.

Luckily, it's not possible to even approach the access point to Lost Boy under most circumstances. It stays happily hidden behind walls of waves.

For whatever reason, it somehow opened up enough for three young people to wander through to the other side. The district uses a drone in its rescue operations these days, and these yielded some interesting photos. The most poignant of which is the one at the top where the individuals had begun constructing an SOS out of wood.

Exactly how long it took and how authorities were contacted isn't known, but you can see what rescuers had to go through. Oregon Coast Beach Connection has marked one of the district's photos to point out the terrain and layout.

Rescuers had to hoist a rescue line around that hazardous point. There were constant incoming waves.

In one photo you can see a rescuer closer to one of the kids. To the untrained eye, those waves may not look deep. So some are going to scoff, undoubtedly. However, to the trained eye, you know there are deeper, wilder waves nearby. It's extremely dangerous with large waves that close.

This is part of the whole point here: don't venture into spots like this and risk not only your own lives but then create the possibilities that rescuers are going to have to risk theirs as well.

Visitors – especially those from out of state – often don't understand the risks of what they're looking at on these beaches. They don't have sneaker waves in most beach areas of the U.S., and certainly not Kansas or Idaho. Nor do they have tides to worry about.

Oregon Coast Beach Connection looked into all this in the 2010s and discovered some uneasy answers about why visitors keep putting themselves at risk. They may even get warned by a local on the spot and just not believe the issue is real.

Now, again, we don't know anything about why these kids went into Lost Boy Beach. So, assumptions of blame and name-calling after you read this just are not the correct response.

What is the correct response is know your beach before you go out there. Know the tides. And listen to locals if they tell something bad could happen (a really awful example of this is what happened this past summer in Cannon Beach Group of Five Rescued from Oregon Coast Surf After Repeated Warnings by Lifeguards ).

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