12 September 2021

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversarty) Part 16: The D River, If You Insist

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Lincoln City geography has this much in common with that of Portland, and it's this: a river divides it and forms the basis for how the numbered streets are determined.

That's where the similarity ends.

Another few words about Lincoln City geography: It's a long, slender city. Along its northeastern side is a body of water called Devil's Lake (attributed to indigenous legend which may or may not have been misremembered by those who displaced those indigenous people ... provided it wasn't made up entirely). At its south end, Devil's Lake turns a point toward the Pacific and, from that point, issues an outlet.

It's about 400-some feet long, and it drains Devil's Lake directly to the ocean. Most of the time, though, it hardly seems much of a stream at all.

This, then, is the "D River", a vast majority of the time anyone crossing the bridge over it on Hwy 101 in the middle of Lincoln City is likely to see it. Prepare to be awed.


It was documented by the Guinness Book of World Records as world's-shortest for a very long time and the State's road signs at the time exalted it as such as it does today.

However, in 1989, Guinness changed that after a group of school children in Great Falls, Montana, had the channel that allows Giant Springs to drain to the Missouri River, having rendered a result of 201 feet. L.C. boosters countered by arguing that the D was 120 feet long at 'extreme high tide', a claim seeming to try too hard even if you love Oregon having the most remarkable of everything (as I do - my Oregon chauvinism is second to nobody's, as anyone who knows me will tell you).

Faced with having to adjudicate between a group of Oregon Coast boosters on one side and Montana schoolchildren on the other, Guinness took the utterly Solomanic approach of fully recusing itself from further authority, never to declare the world's shortest river ever again, and removing the category from their famous compendium altogether. 

While rolling up the court and going home on the Guinness part is something of a downer, it does mean that we can continue to insist it's the world's shortest river, and there isn't a thing anyone can do to contradict us about it.

And the sign still exists at the 101 bridge: D RIVER -- WORLDS SHORTEST.

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