Beaches sign rescued about 5 miles downriver from restaurant

Rest easy, Clark County. The Beaches Float Thru sign was found Tuesday morning and will soon be returned to Beaches Restaurant and Bar.

The wooden sign was found Tuesday morning by two men at the west end of the Port of Vancouver, according to restaurant owner Mark Matthias. He said the pair decided to go looking for the sign after reading it about it in the Tuesday edition of The Columbian.

“I can confirm they saw it in the newspaper (Tuesday) morning, which prompted them to go find it,” he said, laughing. The two men work for a company located at the port and did not want to publicly reveal their names, but Matthias said they “found it on their own time.”

The rescuers found it about 5 miles downriver from Beaches, near the old Alcoa mill site. They were walking and found it along the shore, Matthias said. As reward they will get free dinner for 20 people at Beaches or at WareHouse ’23, which Matthias also owns.

“We’re going to host them for dinner, and they can have whatever they want,” Matthias said. “We’ll wine and dine them.”

The sign was attached to four wooden pilings hooked together, also known as a dolphin. High water levels strained the sign until it broke June 7 and floated away.

The sign was famous among locals. For more than two decades it poked out from the Columbia River near Beaches, dryly offering “Float Thru Service” with the restaurant’s phone number. Over the years, restaurant employees tacked on more jokes: a phone booth, a miniature basketball hoop and a toy lifeguard.

Because it’s a big sign, it will be broken apart and reassembled when it’s brought back to Beaches. There, it will be affixed permanently indoors, with no chance of it getting swept away again.

“It used to be out in the river; now it’s in the restaurant forever,” Matthias said.