The skeletal remains of the old railroad trestle across the tidal flats of Upper Yaquina Bay recall Col. Thomas Hogg’s grand scheme to establish a “second San Francisco” at Yaquina City, a shipping port he started in 1882 six miles up the bay from rival Newport. Yaquina City was the terminus of his Willamette Valley & Coast Railway, an enterprise that promised to bring commerce and tourists from Corvallis to the bay. After years of false starts, the trains finally began running in 1885, but within five years Hogg’s venture was bankrupt, the victim of an unlucky string of steamship wrecks, train derailments and risky investments. Yaquina City gradually disappeared, leaving no evidence it ever existed.