SOLVE's Inland Oregon River Cleanups Get the Wacky Finds As Well

Published 10/13/2026 at 9:55 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Clackamas, Oregon) – It's not just the Oregon coast that needs cleaning these days. Other waterways around the state are getting attention as well.

A season of volunteer-driven work along Oregon’s rivers and streams closed out in September with a handful of final cleanups. These included the High Rocks Park area in Gladstone, where 27 volunteers pulled roughly 750 pounds of litter from the Clackamas River. The event capped the ninth annual Waterway Cleanup Series, a partnership between SOLVE and Clackamas Water Environment Services.

Scoured areas also included many in southern Oregon, around Medford, Talent and Phoenix, to name a few.

And SOLVE shared some of the more curious moments. One of the amusing parts of the Oregon Coast Clean-Ups has always been the oddities found. They happen inland as well.

According to SOLVE's Stefanie Wich-Herrlein, the wacky things found along these cleanups included:

Johnson Creek Cleanup: 28 tires, 5 shopping carts, 3 suitcases, a bicycle, 2 metal chairs, a pallet, and about 100 feet of hose, along with numerous sleeping bags, blankets, and rugs.

Kellogg Creek Cleanup, Milwaukie (hosted by North Clackamas Watersheds Council): 14 shopping carts

Salmon River Paddle & Cleanup: A large number of tires.

High Rocks Park: A bicycle found during our Waterway Cleanup Series wrap-up.

Granted, they're not always as weird as the coastline, where people in the past have literally found the kitchen sink on occasion - along with strikingly crazy finds like most of a rested car, and loads of mysterious items that are sometimes just head-scratching. Oregon Coast Beach Connection has documented decades of those wild items.

Still, the inland sessions – well, they cleanup - in the prize-for-effort category. These are monumental undertakings.

Wich-Herrlein told Oregon Coast Beach Connection that from May through September, the series backed 64 cleanups in 10 counties, drawing more than 1,400 volunteers who removed over 24,000 pounds of litter. Participants also cleared invasive plants and mulched thousands of native plantings, extending the impact beyond trash removal.

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