Wheeler overlooks Nehalem Bay and is linked to a long and debated pre-Oregon past, including accounts of Francis Drake repairing his ship there in the summer of 1579, the wreck of a Spanish galleon in the 1700s, suggestions that the area was the New Albion of Drake's voyage, claims that Bruno de Heceta was the first European to approach the Columbia River bar area in 1775, and assertions that Chinese mariners reached Nehalem Bay before Europeans. A U.S. Geological Survey team made the first survey of Wheeler in 1856. The village was founded as a mill town in 1910 by lumberman Coleman H. ("C.H.") Wheeler, for whom it is named, and he founded the Wheeler Lumber Company saw mill in 1912. The town's success came in part from the railroad, especially freight trains hauling lumber products from Wheeler's mills. By 1981 the Port of Tillamook Bay was operating the line and continued short fun run trains from Garibaldi to Wheeler, but after storm damage to part of the railway in 2007, the port closed the line beyond Wheeler and ended the coast-to-valley train connection. The Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad now operates trains over a 30-mile section between Garibaldi and Salmonberry, and in 2013 the Salmonberry Coalition was formed to advise the Port of Tillamook Bay on converting the unusable rail line into the Salmonberry Trail, linking eight cities and two counties through fields, coast range, fisheries, and the Oregon coastline.