Long shadows, hint o f wood smoke, cool night
breeze. Geese and Winnebagos migrate south, herd-bound and
honking. Summer shuffles away from our little coastal town,
slowly, and fall sneaks in on cold, wet feet. Merchants pause
for breath. Residents poke their heads out into the streets in
tentative, coast-is-clear inquiry, like frazzled and dazed prairie
dogs in the post-buffalo-stampede dust.
The end is near.
The coast is clear. Human sounds taper o ff; wind and rain w ill
soon fill that void. Late summer. Early fall. The time o f year
when local people reoccupy their own public spaces, returning
to streets, beaches, and trails grudgingly bequeathed to the
tourist masses a few months before. Encountering familiar
faces in higher proportions, checking on how the land has
fared. Reclaiming the place while the weather holds. You
w ill find me on the trails.
We have some outstanding hiking trails here on the
northern Oregon coast. Particularly the State Parks: Ecola,
Oswald West, Saddle Mountain. Spectacular places, where
the best views are to be had on the paths less traveled, muddy
routes through the green tangle, far away from the hard
surfaces o f roadway and parking lot. Traversing long
distances, connecting inhabited places across the forested
spaces. From Seaside to Cannon Beach along the Ecola Park
cliffs.
From Arch Cape to Manzanita, over Neahkanie
mountaintops and between towering old trees. (Beside these
paths, a parallel system o f elk trails run, cut through the dense
undergrowth thickets on a m illion hoofbeats).
For thousands o f years, trails connected a network o f
villages on this coast. When ocean canoe travel was
dangerous, w ith s tiff winds or w ild surf, trails allowed people
to go by foot. Packing food, furs, and other goods, scrambling
over the headlands and down to the beaches, where walking
was always easier. Locals might trek from Cannon Beach to
Seaside for get-togethers or trade, or over to Nehalem to visit
relatives in their bay-front homes. For the most part, State
Park paths follow these ancient, Native American trails. In
some Northwestern places, we know that the native peoples
kept trails clear through pruning and the localized use o f fire;
this was probably done here, to keep the trails clear o f salal
and w ild cucumber and huckleberry and spruce, each new
branch and tendril covetous o f the wide-open space and
sunlight found in these long, narrow clearings. On these
heavily-used, well-maintained trails, it would have been
possible to travel the length o f the Oregon coast, clambering
over headlands by trail, then shuffling across the beaches that
lie in-between. When white explorers, traders, missionaries,
and settlers descended upon this coast in the mid-19th century,
most simply walked into the territory on these long-established
trails (a fact immortalized locally in Don Berry’s semi-
fictional account, Trask). In their wake came tribal epidemics
and dislocation, marking the beginning o f the end o f
traditional trail maintenance. Still, many trail segments, the
heavily used ones in particular, became the pre-automotive
coastal highways o f the colonial period, allowing continued
1
'f
Philip Thompson
*
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long-distance travel between the new towns which sprang up
on the coastal margins.
Despite explosive growth and a spectacular
proliferation o f fences, you can still travel on these trails along
the length o f the Oregon coast. From end to end, more or less.
The tourist brochures w ill insist that this Columbia-to-
Califomia trek is possible along the “ Oregon Coast T rail” (o f
which the Ecola and Oswald West State Park trails are a part)
much as it is possible along the “ Pacific Crest T ra il” which
follows the ridge o f the Cascade Mountains. But, unlike the
Pacific Crest Trail, the Oregon Coast Trail is a trail in name
only. I f you walk the coast’s three-hundred-and-sixty-
something mile length, about 55% o f your walk w ill be along
the beaches, and 20% o f the trek - the State Park-owned
headlands mostly - w ill be conducted on true trails. By
necessity, 25% o f this hike w ill be on roadside paths and
sidewalks, often in places where the roadways were
constructed atop old trail routes. Ergo, twenty percent o f the
Trail is a trail. Still, 20% o f the coastline isn’t bad, 75% o f
this route follows the pre-automotive beach-and-headland
route, and more trail segments are under consideration, in
order to minimize roadside travel.
Many people have contributed to the persistence o f
the coastal trail system directly or indirectly, old Oswald West,
that coastal enthusiast Governor and erstwhile Cannon Beach
vacationer, among them. But perhaps no-one is more
responsible for the persistent 20th century presence o f Oregon
coast trails than a man named Samuel Newton Dicken. Raised
by dirt poor parents near the town o f Salt Lick, Kentucky, Sam
Dicken spent his youth a bit out o f place, a bookish kid living
among hardscrabble backwoods Southern farmers; attending
rural colleges, Dicken developed an interest in the natural
sciences, and ultimately was accepted into the University o f
California at Berkeley. There he earned a Ph.D. as a student
o f the prominent Geographer, Carl Sauer, a guru o f the
fledgling environmental movement who believed that
ecological problems were, at their root, historical and cultural.
A t the end o f W orld War II, Sam Dicken was hired at the
University o f Oregon, where he became the founding father o f
the Department o f Geography, the first o f several Berkeley
doctoral students to migrate north to Oregon over the next few
decades, spreading the Sauerian gospel.
In Dicken’s memoirs, entitled The Education o f a
H illb illy , it clear that Dicken grew attached, immediately and
deeply, to the mid-century Oregon coast: the scenery was
magnificent and rugged, much o f the shoreline was
undeveloped and marginally accessible, and our accomplished,
post-War rednecks seemed to remind him o f folks back home
in Salt Lick. He began to research the history o f the Oregon
coast, paying particular attention to the history o f its
occupation and its environmental transformation at the hands
o f Euro-American settlers. Pioneer Trails o f the Oregon
Coast, a study o f the location and use o f trails during the 19th
century, was one o f the outcomes o f his research. It became
apparent to Dicken that the trails had been a vital component
o f the coast’ s history, before and after the arrival o f
Europeans; it also became apparent to Dicken that many
historic trails (as well as many other amenities o f the Oregon
coast) were disappearing fast as the 20lh century unfolded,
bringing urban sprawl, highway construction, and simple
neglect. W ith an interest in both the historical past and the
environmental future o f the Oregon coast, Dicken became a
vocal proponent o f trail preservation, encouraging the State
government, in particular, to lim it the destruction o f remaining
historic trails, purchase land containing unprotected trail
segments, and maintain those historic trails already under their
control.
By the early 1970s, the State o f Oregon began to
expand the modest trail network on State Park lands, pushing
back decades o f brush from historical and aboriginal trails
documented by Dicken. By the time o f Dicken’ s death, about
one decade ago, the trail system allowed the crossing o f all
major headlands by foot, mostly along historic paths. It was
once again possible to hike from one end o f the Oregon coast
to the other, in the woods and on the beaches for the most part,
instead o f on the precarious shoulders o f Highway 101.
Thanks to Dicken and his like-minded peers, you can
still walk in the footsteps o f Native Americans, explorers, and
early settlers along the Oregon coast, in places that still look
like they did a century before, places that smack o f the past.
Over the headlands and through the woods. Along trails where
the only other trace o f human presence is the yellow zig-zag o f
path-side dandelions, their seeds having ridden in on hikers’
boots. Reclaim this place while the weather holds. Walk
between the ancient spruce trees that lined the paths o f peoples
past, and listen: to the crash o f the surf below, the eagles and
seagulls, the wind. And not much else. The coast is clear.
OCTOBER 11 1996
M oby
H ôtel &
BANK OF
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M e m b e r F D IC
Astoria Warrenton
Seaside Cannon Beach
F arm
071 w i l l a x Bay
Washi igton 98637
1 60 per person
F or R éservations c i I nformation
(360) 665-4543 • F a (360) 665-6887
chef Jeff McMahon
Columbus day weekend
of the "Saucebox"
Portland. Oregon
cranberry (estivai
Gcppctto’s
Shoppe
200 N. Hemlock
Cannon Beach, OR
436-2467
LUNCH BOXE?
Curious George
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New styles arrive soon!
Owners -JeH la Gladys
1238 8. Hemlock
P.O. Box 985
Cannon Beach, OR
97110
(SO3) 436-2000
ra x (503) 436-0746
Still performing ALL
Our Usual Services
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SIGNS & BANNERS
o f all k inds
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P A C IF IC M E D IA T IO N A S S O C IA T E S
_ _________ il learning m ore about the environm ents.
cultures, a n d literatures o f the coastal Northwest? Then
you are invited to e nroll in an in te n h a d p lin a ry fall sem inar
at Clatsop C om m unity College. Explore the northern
O regon coast by foot and b y b o o k .. .w rite about the coastal
J
• P A C IF IC M E D IA T IO N
D is p u te s ? C o n flic ts ?
C o m m u n ic a tio n P ro b le m s ?
T R Y M E D IA T IO N
places a nd coastal peoples you encounter. Instructors
D oug D e u r (a uthor o f “Ecola Ilahee” fo r The U p p e r Left
Edgdl t a d C arol Knutson (author o f “Rube M o n ta g e * for
H ip fo M w ill teach the course on Saturdays, from S ept 2 6
to Dec. 12. Students register fo r both Geography 199
(C ultural G eography o f the Pacific Northw est) and English
u re of the Pacific Northwest). College credit is
t m ore inform ation, call (9 0 9 )7 3 6 - 3 3 4 6 .
• Econom ical » Cooperative
• C onstructive
• C onfidential
P acific M ediation A ssociates
(503) 717-1172
AH religions are founded on the fear o f the manyand
the cleverness o f the few.
Stendhal
ter
30 PERSONS
PlVE COURSE D I N t i É K '
©
P A C IF IC M E D IA T IO N A S S O C IA T E S
• P A C IF IC M E D IA T IO N
S p e c ia lty B a k e ry
B re a d s - P a s trie s
D es s e rts - Espresso
E m m a W h ite B uilding
1064 H e m lo c k - M id to w n C a n n o n Beach
T he tro u b le w ith lo v in g is that pets don’ t last long
enough and people last to o long.
UftER. LtFTCb&E SJTO&l -MTO
5