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Quick Facts About Oregon Coast Treasures, Geologic Wonders |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
02/25/08
Secrets of the Season |
Quick Facts About Oregon Coast Treasures, Geologic Wonders
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| Cannon found in Arch Cape (photo Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium) |
(Nehalem, Oregon) – Much of the United States is focusing on the Oregon coast at this time, with various geologic developments and historic objects popping up left and right.
It started with low sand levels that revealed shipwrecks on the southern Oregon coast, strange tree stumps that are millennia-old, and then a couple of armaments from what appears to be the very same ship whose 100-year-old wreckage gave the north coast town Cannon Beach its name.
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Currently, those famed cannon pieces are sitting in an Oregon State Parks and Recreation facility in Nehalem, awaiting groups of scientists and a peculiar process where rust and crusty sea stuff is removed by fresh water and pieces of paper draped over the bombshell objects.
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| Red tower at Arch Cape (photo Boothe) |
To keep you up to speed on all the wild changes and developments in the worlds of history, tourism, geology and geography, here’s a quick fact list and timeline.
- Low sand levels start showing off “ghost forests” at Cape Lookout State Park in late November. Winter storms and their scouring action are the cause of this. These are ancient forests some 1000 to 5000 years old that have been preserved by elements engulfing them, such as sand, clay or mud.
- Sand scouring action starts eating away at dunes in Seaside in late November, early December.
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| Stumps at Thiel Creek (photo Guy DiTorrice) |
- Ghost forests start appearing on the central coast, like at Thiel Creek, just north of Seal Rock.
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- December windstorm takes attention away from such geologic wonders.
- On the central coast, Guy DiTorrice notes various fossils, agates and jaspers are also in great abundance.
- January and early February storm action washes more sand away from Oregon beaches. Tourists don’t really return en masse until sunny weather of mid-February.
- Early February: shipwrecks and other puzzling objects start showing up is places like Coos Bay and Florence.
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| Fossils falling out of eroding cliffs at Ona Beach (photo DiTorrice) |
- Week of February 10: Sand levels are noted to be exceptionally low in many places on the Oregon coast, such as the wreck of the Peter Iredale, near Astoria. It is more explosed than usual.
- February 19: a family vacationing in Arch Cape, near Cannon Beach, is gawking at weird-looking stumps in the sand (not knowing they are 4,000 years old). They discover two cannons, encrusted by years beneath the sand. The cannons are believed to be the missing cannons from the USS Shark, which wrecked at the Columbia River mouth more than 150 years ago. In 1898, one of its three cannons was found at what is now Arch Cape, eventually giving the town of Cannon Beach its name.
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That cannon is on display at the Cannon Beach Historical Society, in Cannon Beach.
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| One of the cannons getting lifted into a Nehalem facility |
- Also present on the sands of Arch Cape are ghost forests some 4,000 years old, entombed in clay. Its soft, grayish material creates a strange sensation for those walking on it.
- That week, members of the Seaside Aquarium also note weird “red towers” at Arch Cape: strange, reddish shapes that are created by compacted iron beneath the ten or so feet of sand that are missing at the moment. The red towers are peculiar to the north coast. No reports of this come from the central coast.
- The same week, the cannons are lifted out of the surf by Oregon State Parks staff and brought to a facility in Nehalem. “The cannon are in tanks of water and covered with layers of wet cloth,” says a State Parks spokesman. “The water bath, refreshed weekly, will draw salt from the objects and protect them from further corrosion. The cannon are fragile, having survived in a protective, oxygen-free environment for many decades.”
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| Neskowin's eerie forest of stumps |
- Decisions about the cannon pieces fall
to the Department of State Lands. This is the agency that actually owns
the beach (and all the way out to three miles from shore) on behalf of
the people of Oregon. Department of Parks and Recreation archaeologists
are caretakers for now, protecting the cannon from damage and advising
State Lands on the next steps.
- More ghost forests are quite visible at Neskowin, just
south of Pacific City. These show themselves year round.
More stories on this subject:
Quick Facts About Oregon Coast Treasures, Geologic Wonders Much of the United States is focusing on the Oregon coast at this time, with various geologic developments and historic objects popping up left and right.
How To Find Oregon Coast Odd Discoveries, Artifacts If you want to play tresure hunter or geology explorer on the coast, here's a list of places to find the good stuff
The Science Behind Oregon Coast's Recent Treasures A big rush of unusual objects, some thousands to millions of years old, have been appearing on the Oregon coast. Here's why and how.
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