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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2022
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Trails
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If this sounds like the plot of the
movie “Goonies,” you’re not far wrong.
Hollywood stole much of the story for
that goofball film. Digging on the beach
or on public land is not allowed, but hik-
ing is fine. Ready to come look for clues?
Searching for treasure clues
First hike to the mountain’s summit
for an overview of the area. Then follow
the new section of the Oregon Coast
Trail toward the beach at Manzanita.
Along the way, I’ll tell you more about
both treasures.
To start, drive Highway 101 north of
Tillamook 28 miles to a ”Neahkahnie
Mtn Trail” sign at Sunset Drive, between
mileposts 41 and 42. Turn inland on a
gravel road for 0.4 mile and park at a
wide spot before you reach a locked
gate.
Near a portable restroom on the left,
look for a trail sign where the summit
path begins. Steep switchbacks lead up
through meadows 0.9 mile to a ridgetop
crossing of an old service road. Con-
tinue straight on a path that contours
0.6 mile around the wooded back of the
mountain to an unmarked opening. If
the trail starts to go downhill, you’ve
gone too far. From this opening, scram-
ble 50 feet up to the right to find the
summit meadow viewpoint.
This perch atop Neahkahnie is a great
place to unpack your lunch, get out a
pair of binoculars and start looking for
treasure clues.
Twenty miles of beach stretch before
you. A long sand spit separates Neha-
lem Bay from the Pacific. To the right,
the cliffs of Neahkahnie Mountain stick
out half a mile into the ocean.
Those cliffs have caught many a ship.
The Alaska current then typically
sweeps the remains south onto the Ne-
halem spit near Manzanita. Why have
clues been turning up inland, in the
bay? And why would the Spanish be
sailing here anyway?
To answer those questions, we need
a little background in early sea expedi-
tions and Spanish gold.
Drake's treasure hauls
In 1577, the swashbuckling English-
man Sir Francis Drake became the first
European to venture north of California
by sea. In those days, Spanish conquis-
tadors were shipping boatloads of Aztec
and Incan gold to Spain. England, virtu-
ally at war with Spain, allowed its mer-
chant ships to loot any Spanish treasure
ships they could find. The daring Drake
took up the offer. He filled his hold with
pirated gold off the Pacific coast of
South America. Then he realized that
bringing his booty back around Cape
Horn would mean facing the entire
Spanish fleet on the trip home.
In desperation Drake struck north,
hoping to discover a “Northwest Pas-
sage” — a sea route to England around
the unmapped shore of North America.
It’s unclear how far north he sailed, or
whether he actually landed in Oregon,
but he certainly didn’t like the weather.
His log complains of “most vile, thicke,
and stinking fogges.”
When storms forced Drake to aban-
don hopes of a shortcut, he tried the un-
thinkable: He sailed west, circling the
globe via Africa. Drake brought his gold
back to London the long way, and was
hailed a hero.
In the years that followed, Spanish
galleons routinely crossed the Pacific
between colonies in the Philippines and
Neahkahnie Mountain. WILLIAM SULLIVAN/FOR THE REGISTER-GUARD
cisco Xavier, which disappeared in 1705.
Using metal detectors, investigators
in Oregon discovered magnetic irregu-
larities in Nehalem Bay. Could the ship
have been washed over the sand spit by
the Cascadia Subduction tsunami of
1700? If so, the ship could only be the
Santo Christo de Burgos, which wrecked
before that date.
With growing excitement, divers
were sent into Nehalem Bay to inspect
the underwater site. Instead of a ship-
wreck, however, they found discarded
railroad rails.
An Oregon treasure
Neahkahnie Mountain as seen from a Manzanita beach. WILLIAM SULLIVAN/FOR THE
REGISTER-GUARD
Mexico. Several treasure ships were lost
at sea — and several tribes along the
Oregon Coast have legends of ancient
shipwrecks. But people didn’t connect
the two until the 1850s, when Gold Rush
miners began spreading out from Cali-
fornia, snooping after rumors of gold.
Decades of treasure (and
shipwreck) hunts
The most widely circulated story de-
scribes an early Spanish wreck at the
base of Neahkahnie Mountain. Thirty
survivors made it to the beach, ferrying
the ship’s treasure ashore in a longboat.
The men dragged a chest up onto the
mountain’s slopes and dug a hole.
Knowing that Indians feared disturbing
the graves of the dead, the captain shot
his black Caribbean slave and buried
him on top of the treasure. Then the
captain shot or drove away the crew
members who wouldn’t fit in the ship’s
longboat, and he ordered the remainder
to row him back across the ocean to-
ward Mexico.
By 1870, a gold digger named Pat
Smith had become so infatuated with
this story that he married a Clatsop
woman to get inside information from
the tribe. In 1890, Smith’s excavations
revealed several strange boulders, now
on display in the Tillamook County Pio-
neer Museum. The rocks are inscribed
with arrows, crosses and the letters
“DEW.” Smith believed they were coded
directions to the treasure site. Specula-
tion mounted when people found
chunks of beeswax washing up, some
stamped with old insignia, and one with
the number “67.”
Beeswax was in fact a common cargo
on Spanish ships. The priests who over-
saw churches in South America com-
plained that tallow candles blackened
the church interior. They demanded
that votive candles be made of beeswax,
which doesn’t smoke. But wax-making
bees are not native to South America.
For an empire as broad as Spain’s,
this was not a problem. A species of bee
in the Philippines produced plenty of
wax. Each year, when a cargo ship was
sent across the Pacific, it brought tons of
Philippine beeswax to light the
churches of South America. The ships
that made this voyage were huge, with
hundreds of passengers. Each annual
ship was so valuable that its cargo was
catalogued carefully in a manifest.
In 2007, researchers studying the
manifests revealed that 33 of the galle-
ons from the Philippines had never ar-
rived in America. Some of those ships
might have been blown off course by Pa-
cific storms to wreck in Oregon. The two
most likely candidates, according to the
researchers, were the Santo Christo de
Burgos, lost in 1693, and the San Fran-
Miller
Continued from Page 1B
new anglers, particularly younger
prospects.
The second is to get so-called lapsed
anglers back into the game. Those are
former rod-and-reelers who walked
away because of other commitments
such as college or careers, or were trans-
plants unfamiliar with the opportuni-
ties.
“I think that’s always one of our
goals, to recruit and retain,” Reesman
said, “and to reactivate our anglers.”
But wait. There’s more (events, that
is).
If you are a kid, or you’ve got kids, or
are just interested in finding out about
fishing as a newbie or a used-to-be,
there are several upcoming opportuni-
ties.
Attending the events is free, but
adults and kids ages 12 to 17 who partici-
pate in fishing need a fishing license.
You need to purchase those in advance.
There are no on-site sales.
Family Fishing Events within striking
distance of Salem are: From 9:30 a.m.
until 1:30 p.m. on May 7 at the Alton Bak-
er Canoe Canal (Alton Baker Park) in Eu-
gene; and from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. on
May 14 at Sheridan Pond.
“If the weather’s nice I think we’re
going to have a lot of people there,”
Reesman said about the Alton Baker
fishing clinic. “I’ve gotten a lot of calls
from folks who are interested in bring-
ing their groups.
“I think it might be a little bit crazy …
Trout stocking has resumed at Silverton Reservoir after the annual winter hiatus.
HENRY MILLER / SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN JOURNAL
in a good way,” she added, then laughed.
For information about the Alton Bak-
er event, call Reesman at (541) 686-
7864. For the Sheridan Pond event, call
Jonathan Cox at (971) 673-6034.
For more information online about all
of the events statewide, and to get di-
rections or check out the trout-stocking
schedules for the rest of 2022, go to the
links at: https://myodfw.com/articles/
take-family-fishing
In other news
Stock up on the Dramamine – And
make your reservations.
Opening day of the spring all-depth
halibut season off the central Oregon
coast is May 12. Fishing is open daily
through June 30.
The near-shore halibut central coast
season in waters 240 feet or less depth
opens daily starting May 1.
Central coast is defined as the area
between Cape Falcon, near Manzanita,
south to Humbug Mountain just south
of Port Orford.
Speaking about stocking up… - Silver
Creek Reservoir, better known as Silver-
ton Reservoir, was schedules to be
stocked for the first time this year the
week of April 18 through 22 with a shad
If you’re still eating lunch on top of
Neahkahnie Mountain, it’s time to hike
in quest of a better treasure.
Walk back down the mountain the
way you came for 0.6 mile, but when you
reach the old gravel service road, follow
it left. It descends 1.2 miles back to the
gate on the road where you left your car.
Just 100 feet before the gate, a sign
marks a new section of the Oregon
Coast Trail to the left. Follow this path
through the woods half a mile to a view-
point overlooking an old clearcut.
What kind of treasure is this?
A good one, actually. What you’re
looking at is a partnership among public
and private landowners, tribes, coun-
ties, volunteers and donors to finish
building a 362-mile trail the length of
the Oregon Coast. Until recently, the
OCT route from Neahkahnie Mountain
to Manzanita had involved walking the
shoulder of Highway 101. The new 2.5-
mile route uses easements across pri-
vate land, under a powerline and in the
highway right-of-way for a trail com-
pletely off the pavement.
Projects like this are underway all up
and down the Oregon Coast, aiming to
complete an off-highway route for the
OCT within a decade.
That will be a true Oregon treasure.
Perhaps it’s no surprise the visionary
trail builders started digging here at
Neahkahnie Mountain, the home of
treasure tales that might come true.
William Sulllivan is the author of 22
books, including “The Ship in the
Woods” and the updated “100 Hikes” se-
ries for Oregon. Learn more at
oregonhiking.com.
less than 3,000 keeper-size (8 inch)
rainbow trout.
And a similar delivery (2,000-plus
keepers) is planned for the week of April
25 through 29.
To get there, take Silverton Road east
from Salem until it comes to a T at West
Main in Silverton. Turn left on Main,
then just after crossing the bridge; take
a right on North Water and watch for the
entrance to Silverton Reservoir Marine
Park on the right several miles up the
road.
There is a $5 day-use fee payable by
credit or debit card at the parking lot.
Two-fisted fishing is expanded – If
you have a two-rod validation with your
fishing license, you now can use it the
length of the Willamette River, includ-
ing tributaries, that are open to fishing
for hatchery Chinook salmon, hatchery
steelhead, trout, warmwater fish such
as bass.
The lone exception is fishing for stur-
geon, which remains restricted to one
rod per angler.
The temporary rule change expands
the two-rod zone above Willamette
Falls.
The use of two rods, with validation,
has been allowed downstream from the
falls on the Willamette since March 1.
The validation is a $28 add-on to the
$44 annual resident fishing license and
$9.75 Columbia River Basin Endorse-
ment.
Thought for the week: Road trips into
the outback verify the truism that the
stronger the radio signal, the more reli-
gious the station.
Contact Henry via email at Henry-
MillerSJ@gmail.com