The Oregon Coast Trail is a long-distance hiking route along the Pacific coast of Oregon in the United States. It follows the coast of Oregon from the mouth of the Columbia River to the California border south of Brookings.
The trail was created by Oregon Recreation Trails Advisory Council and managed by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as part of the state park system of Oregon. The walking length of the trail varies depending on choice of passage across or around estuaries and rivers along the route. If a ferry is not arranged or available, an alternate route around the estuary must be taken; if traveling on foot, this means road walking. The length of the trail, using the Gmaps Pedometer tool to measure route mileage, is approximately 425 miles (680 km) if no ferries are used, though the official coastal guide gives a length of 382 miles (615 km). If no ferries are used, about 39% of the route is on the beach, 41% is on paved road, and 20% is on trail and dirt roads.
A chief feature of the trail are the public beaches created by 1967's Oregon Beach Bill which formalized the public nature of the coastal beaches since the first such law was passed in 1913. Many of the locations, particularly on the southern portion, are remote and isolated. The Oregon coast is bordered by a temperate rainforest, much of which is now second or third growth.
The difficulty of the trail ranges from easy to moderate, with elevation changes of up to a few hundred feet.
Read more about Oregon Coast Trail: Route, Trail Walking Information, Points of Interest
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“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)