Odd Travel Tips: Ancient 'Ghostly' Finds Oregon Coast Has That No Other U.S. Beach Has

Published 10/15/23 at 10:22 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Oregon Coast) – There are various things along the U.S. shoreline and interior sometimes referred to as “ghost forests.” They can be kind'a eerie-looking: stands or piles of dead trees clumped together, like some apocryphal remnant. The term “ghost forest” doesn't make that sound any less spooky, either. (Above: ghost stump at Moolack Beach, Newport. All photos Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

To many Oregonians, they're fairly used to the term, but the understanding of them is way off because of a constant barrage of misinformation. Yet when you say “ghost forest,” more often than not you'll get folks' ears pricking up and mutterances of the town of Neskowin, the little beach burgh with these old, old oddities. At almost 2,000 years old, the ghost forest stumps here are actually among the younger of those on Oregon beaches, but by far and away not the only ones.

Most are around 4,000 years old here and they range all the way to 80,000 years old.

It can also be said virtually no other beaches in the U.S. have these ancient freaky sights: crusty, ragged, old stumps of mystery that almost seem like petrified wood. Aside from maybe a minor handful on the south Washington coast, there are no others this old around the nation's beaches.

There's about 45 different places that ghost forests can be found along the Oregon coast, and most are around 4,000 years old. The problem with that, however, is that the majority of them never show except during extreme low sand events after a lot of winter storms have scoured out the beaches. Neskowin is the only place where you can see that many all year long, though there's a small handful near Coos Bay at Sunset Beach that are about as old as the Viking age and two in the Newport area about 4,000 years old. See The Unheralded Ghost Forests of South Oregon Coast / Coos Bay in Photos

Coos Bay ghost forest, courtesy Manuela Durson Fine Arts

One found on the north coast is all the way up to 80,000 years old.

There's a growing number of these ghost forests in North Carolina, but they're a recent phenomenon and nowhere near 4K years old.

If you want to see the really cool, old ones, you have to hope wintertime opens up the beaches. Then you'll find really craggy examples at Arch Cape and Hug Point (near Cannon Beach), McPhillips Beach (just north of Pacific City, Newport's Moolack Beach and maybe just south of town at Holiday Creek, Seal Rock's Curtis St. and Tillicum Beach.

These are the fascinating ones.

Otter Rock

How did these get here? Interestingly, you can see how it happened by looking at the North Carolina ghost forests happening now, with encroaching saltwater and sand killing off stands of forests.

Geologists such as Tom Horning or Portland State University's Dr. Scott Burns say it was a slow process that slowly killed them: essentially like what you see in North Carolina: the whole encroachment idea. The difference is here that these stumps where buried by sand and covered up for maybe thousands of years as Oregon's coastal landscape changed over millennia.

Unfortunately, what keeps getting passed around is that the ghost forests on these beaches were the victim of a sudden drop from the big Cascadia quake in 1700. There are ghost forest remnants of that aplenty along the Oregon and Washington coast, but not on beaches. Those are all farther inland and look very different. See Explanations of Neskowin Ghost Forest Wrong, Say Oregon Coast Geologists

While this was one of the theories for a long time about beach ghost forests, it was disproven in 2006 by geologists Curt Peterson and Roger Hart.

Neskowin

The two really striking stumps that are 4,000 years old and visible year-round are at the entrance to Newport's Beverly Beach and at the bottom of Otter Rock, on its southern face. These big, intricate elders don't have all the stuff encrusted on them that those at Neskowin do, which often makes the latter quite visually striking.

Those at Coos Bay's Sunset on the southern Oregon coast are quite ragged and spooky looking, and their origin is also slow encroachment, but about 1200 years ago. MORE PHOTOS BELOW

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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