Southern Oregon Coast: Port Orford
On the way to Bandon, Port Orford is a small coastal Oregon port town with a lot of history. It was the first county seat of Curry County, and it is the westernmost settlement in the contiguous US. The Port’s dock itself is a quirky rarity:
Port Orford's high dock, home to a commercial fishing fleet, is one of only a few docks in the world where fishing and pleasure boats are lowered by crane into the open ocean and hoisted back up to trailers on the dock when they return to port.
Port Orford Heads State Park comprises a Life-Saving Station and Boathouse, and is run as a museum and park with trails, under joint cooperation between the Oregon State Park Service and the Cape Blanco Heritage Society.
This is U.S. Coast Guard Lifeboat 36498 (Port Orford) in an open air structure purpose-built to house it when it returned home in 2000:
U.S. Coast Guard 36′ motor lifeboat 36498 served at the Port Orford Lifeboat Station until the station ceased lifeboat services in 1964. The boat was transferred to Coast Guard Station Bandon (Oregon), where she served until at least 1972. Later she was transferred to Coast Guard Station Umpqua River (Oregon). 36498 served at Umpqua River with distinction until December 1979, when she was taken out of service and transferred to Coast Guard Station Coos Bay. In Coos Bay, she was “parted out” to keep CG 36535 at Depoe Bay, Oregon, in service. (36535 is now on display at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.)
In 1981, after serving the United States Coast Guard for over 35 years, 36498 was pulled out of the water for the last time. She remained at the Coos Bay station until 1989 when she was put on display in Bandon. She came home to Port Orford in early 2000.
The Life-Saving Station house served as both crew barracks and operations headquarters, with a separate officer-in-charge house nearby, which I apparently did not capture a picture of. There is also a garage with brightly painted green doors that were more of a treat than the structure itself (below).
Heading out to the trails
This path leads out to where the lookout tower used to be, access to the Boathouse via more than 500 stairs to Nellie’s Cove (we didn’t go down there), and meandering trails around the headland with views of the ocean, rugged cliffs, and rocks.
On a headland trail looking west out to the Pacific Ocean, with a small rocky cove below. The cove was full of kelp, which you can see is the dark “shadow” in and on the surface of the deep seafoam-green water.
The flora includes this adorable shrub with scalloped leaves and puffy cream flowers that I believe to be called Coyote Bush, native to the Pacific coast from Oregon to California. It has some unique qualities that suits it to thrive in poor soils with erosion issues, such as is found on coastal bluffs. The leaves are thick and waxy, aiding with moisture retention. The plant has adapted to survive wildfire too. The leaves are coated in a fire retardant substance, and the plant can quickly regrow from the large crown and root system in the event that the above ground growth is completely burned.
It is easy to get turned around and possibly lost on these trails, though as long as you don’t walk off a cliff they all lead back to the same place. We didn’t always find them to be consistently marked, and the quality of the walking surfaces varied greatly, as some appeared to be “user-generated” trails and most likely not sanctioned.
The namesake Port Orford Cedar, prized for horticulture and industry uses:
Disease and logging are putting the survival of Port Orford cedar at risk. Stewardship of this ecological and economic treasure will be required to ensure its survival as part of the Oregon story.
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