Ethereal and Ancient Near 45th Parallel on Oregon's Coast

Published 10/24/24 at 7:35 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Neskowin, Oregon) – Head just north of Lincoln City and you're suddenly in a kind of forested middle-of-nowhere. It's sometimes even referred to as the “Corridor of Mystery:” about 15 miles worth of undulating Highway 101 coupled with twists and turns in both the literal sense and the scenic sense. It gets darker, more thickly wooded, and at one point you pass over the actual 45th parallel – halfway between the equator and the North Pole. (All photos Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

It's also here where you pass the boundary between north Oregon coast and central Oregon coast. If there's ever going to be mysterious ley lines in the state (speculatively speaking, of course), it feels like it's gonna be here.

Then, suddenly, abruptly: the little village of Neskowin pops into view. Not much by the initial glance, the place hides a somewhat magical stretch of beach and loads – just loads – of natural history. Neskowin is barely even a village, not much more than a semi-incorporated grouping of homes and a few lodgings, with only a store and maybe a restaurant. Yet it's vast in other ways.

Wander onto this beach and at first it seems like your run-of-the-mill romantic spot. Yet there's an ethereal vibe here: a certain indefinable, almost spiritual calmness that hits you. Not everyone feels it. But it's one of those slightly strange bits of conversation that's still only shared person-to-person when chatting about it, something that still hasn't made it online. It's like a legend, but only known by a certain percentage of the population.

Stranger still: it's more present on the northern, much more secretive stretch of Neskowin.

From the parking lot of the main state park it's a short walk to the beach and its slightly unusual dark grains of sand, plus enough driftwood to make yourself a decent fire. Those grains even get bigger and darker the farther north you go.

Proposal Rock is the famed blob-like structure sitting directly in view as you first emerge, boasting that small forest sitting on top. There's a sizable creek between you and it, however, and to get to the structure means crossing this cold body of water barefoot. During winter that's not always possible.

Atop the rock, there are some hidden trails meandering through the mini-forest, but it's become more treacherous in recent decades. That trail is awfully slippery at its start. Also, watch the tide closely if you hop up here or you could get stranded. Oregon's branches of the U.S. Coast Guard have answered a few too many calls for help up here in the last decade.

There's a fascinating little detail hidden on Proposal Rock, however. Near the entrance, look for a small, round brass plaque, an oddity embedded there early in the century. It's apparently a survey marker, though it bares the ID of a local power company.

That company does not know why it was put there – Oregon Coast Beach Connection checked. Its purpose is lost to time.

Between here and the looming cliffs of Cascade Head sit another major wonder: the Ghost Forest of Neskowin. This is an ancient stand of trees between 1,000 to 2,000 years old, preserved beneath the sands by some sort of slow event that covered them, thus hiding them from the decaying effects of oxygen.

They do indeed look a bit ghostly: slightly eerie shadows of a formerly glorious forest.

And no, it was not an earthquake. That was proven about 20 years ago. Neskowin is full of surprises, if you just pay attention. That's one of them. See Explanations of Neskowin Ghost Forest Wrong, Say Oregon Coast Geologists

Another surprise is the giant of Cascade Head looming above it. The ancient Oregon coast landmark goes back some 36 million years or so and was once a giant volcano. That and Proposal Rock are all that's left of it. Yet another surprise: Proposal Rock is its “child,” geologically, now orphaned.

Those blackened sands of Neskowin? That's from Cascade Head. Beaches just below a major or even minor headland on the Oregon coast are often comprised of that structure's finely ground bits.

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