This Week's Storms Could Reveal Oregon Coast Oddities: More Ghost Forests, 'Red Towers'

Published 11/06/25 at 6:45 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Seaside, Oregon) - As winter presses on and storms continue to pound the shoreline, the chances increase of spotting strange, even baffling objects emerging from sand scoured by wave action. It’s not a sure thing – it doesn't happen every year. But the constant battering of king tides coupled with storm surges recently are going to take their toll and their chunks out of Oregon coast. (Red tower at Hug Point / Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

When this onslaught is over, look for gravel beds rich with agates at places like Bandon, Coos Bay, Yachats, Lincoln City and more.

Ghost forests could well be popping up: like those at Coos Bay's Sunset Beach, or the really ones (4,000 years-old) at Pacific City, Newport, south of Cannon Beach, or the super ancient ones at 80,000 years old at Netarts. In Search of More Oregon Coast Ghost Forests - Where to Find Ghost Forests

Among the more peculiar phenomena to watch for are the “red towers,” surreal, stump-like formations that typically show up only on the north coast - if they appear at all. These oddities resemble a mashup of a 1970s Yes album cover and a Dr. Seuss illustration, with twisted, puzzling shapes in varying shades of red.

Some have been spotted on occasion down in Newport and elsewhere. For some reason, they seem to occur more often at Arch Cape and Hug Point just south of Cannon Beach, however.

1200-year-old ghost forest Coos Bay - Photo Manuela Durson - Manuela Durson Fine Arts

They stand just a couple feet tall, but they make a big impression.

Seaside geologist Tom Horning explains that the “red towers” are essentially beach sand bonded by red iron oxide, formed beneath layers of sand.

There, protected from wave action and debris, these fragile, sandstone-like structures remain intact.

“Minerals cement the sands together to form reinforced, irregular bodies within and under the beach, which are then exposed to the casual observer when the beach is washed away,” Horning said. “Not uncommonly, the tops of the towers are exposed first, and rocks will wear these away, creating little pot-hole craters that make attractive landforms for photographers.”

At Hug Point, mushroom-shaped rocks have also surfaced in the past, their full forms revealed by low sand levels.

“These knobs of sandstone bedrock are being eroded by cobbles and pebbles on the sea floor that are swished and thrown against the bedrock during periods of strong storms,” Horning said. “Similar ledges are present under the cliffs at Hug Point, formed by the same erosional process.”

Some winters - though not all - have exposed strange discolorations in the inverted, terrace-like ledges beneath the cliffs. Horning attributes the hues to the fact that these areas are almost never exposed to air.

According to Horning, Hug Point's beach has been eroding for roughly 4,000 years. In that time, the cliffs have retreated only about 40 to 50 feet. The underlying cliff and bedrock were formed millions of years ago, later buried by debris and re-emerging through erosion around 4,000 years back.

Such erosion likely prompted local native tribes to relocate periodically, as the ocean consumed coastal forests and villages, pushing communities eastward across the coastal plain toward the mountain front that now defines the modern shoreline.

They know this to be the case around Newport. 5,000 years ago - according to Oregon geologist Roger Hart (now deceased) - Yaquina Head was a giant sand dune from which tribes would fish. That eroded away.

Interestingly, while erosion and rising sea levels may be sweeping parts of the Oregon coast away, the north coast appears to be slowly lifting.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The key here is safety. Do NOT head to this beach under storm conditions, like in this video

“If all this is accurate, the north coast is rising independently of sea level by about one foot every thousand years,” Horning said. “It appears that the coast drops from one to six feet with each earthquake, but the land still rises slowly in the meantime. After the Great Alaska Earthquake in 1964, for example, the land at Kenai had dropped about six feet. It has since all been restored by uplift in only 40 years. Presumably these rates vary through time, and the same will probably happen along the coast of Oregon, after the next Big One hits - whenever that will be.”

Whatever the greater processes exist, all this will be fun to look for on the beaches once the storms have stopped.

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