Today, Yachats is considered the “gem of the Oregon coast” with its jagged shoreline, massive wave breaks, and upscale restaurants and hotels. However, Yachats’ early history, circa the 1800s, is filled with a litany of atrocities against the local native people. White settlers, seeing the value in fishing, mining, and timber, forced the hunter-gathering tribes onto small patches of land just inland to exist by farming alone. Numerous records give grim accounts of entire villages emptied by white man diseases or forced starvation.[The Yahacts Indians, Origins of the Yachats Name, and the Prison Camp Years]

The Yachats River flows through the Coast Range for about 12 miles and has a watershed of 27,760 acres. The name is derived from the native American Indians of the Alsea people meaning “dark water at the foot of the mountain”. The Alsea were hunter-gatherers who migrated between summer camps and winter residences. The mouth of the Yachats River was used to access seals, sea lions, salmon, and smelt.

The forests here are primarily dominated by Sitka spruce, Douglas Fir, moss, and lush ferns. Old growth (where the upper canopy is dominated by trees over 200 years old) covered an average of 48% of the Coast Range over the past 3,000 years and forests containing trees greater than 80 years old covered an average of 71% of the forest. Today, old growth makes up ~15% of the forest and trees greater than 80 years old make up 35% of the forest. Or put another way, in the last 125 years old growth forest have decreased by ~ 70% and forest with trees greater than 80 years old have decreased by ~50%.

Mature forests (forests about 80 to 200 years old) have some elements of old-growth character, including larger diameter trees (20″ or greater), trees devoid of lower limbs, more spacing, and dead tree fall. Mature forests, with time, become the next generation of old-growth forests.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife purchased the land behind this sign in 1979 to improve winter forage for Roosevelt Elk. The ground has been cultivated and planted with a mixture of grasses and clovers and is fertilized each fall. Summer forage is removed by grazing cattle or by hay removal so that the early fall rains will produce tender new growth that elk prefer.

This 1.7 mile trail – which some archaeologists say could be around 3,000 years old — served as a pathway for people of the coastal tribes. In the late 1800s, it became part of County Road 804, the settler’s route of travel from the farmlands of the upper Yachats River valley to Waldport’s Alsea Bay to the north. The road included a 7-mile stretch of beach that was passible only at low tide. In the 1930s, Road 804 was relocated to the present day highway location. Start and parking at Lat / Long: 44.321944, -124.105648