Trip Report

A good stop on the Oregon coast is the Washburn State Park, a few miles north of Heceta Head, where we enjoyed our coffee break. Thank you hospitality committee. Cape Perpetua Visitor Center was our next stop, here we learned about the early Alsea people. These natives were here for thousands of years, but were gone by mid-20th century. Michael Gonzalez, interpretive staff member, shared the native history and some early foods, such as berries and jerky. Katie Ollesch, graduate student intern, led a walk down (and back up) to some original middens, collections of mollusk shells and other debris from early Indian settlement. These middens, all along the coast, were often football field sized landfills.
Our next stop was the Oregon Hatchery Research Center 20 miles east of Waldport on Highway 34, then two miles north on east Fall Creek Road. We had our lunch at tables overlooking Fall Creek, an idyllic setting for a picnic. The hatchery, a joint effort of OSU and Oregon Fish & Wildlife, is seeking to discover best practices regarding hatchery salmon and steelhead in the interest of protecting native fish. This state of the art facility hosts researchers from around the world with indoor and natural environment labs. Joseph O’Neil, education and outreach director for the hatchery, gave us a superb and complete tour. As we went along he shared results of some of the 100 research projects carried out since beginning in 2005. In later October and November Fall Creek will have returning spawning fish visible beside the hatchery building. The facility is open to the public seven days a week with a small interpretive display area inside. It is worth a visit. Thanks to Rick Ahrens for being our naturalist.