2 min
Overview
The west shore Cullaby Lake is part of a Clatsop County park which offers two picnic areas and an interpretive trail. The park also displays the Historic Lindgren House, an ax-hewn cedar log cabin built by two Finnish pioneers who homesteaded in the Soapstone Lake area. The cabin was dismantled and moved here in 1970 after repeated occurrences of vandalism at its original location. Cullaby Lake itself is well-known as a destination for warm water fishing (bass, bluegill, crappie, perch), but can experience toxic algae blooms in the summer. The place is quiet in the colder months, which is a good time to visit and experience the interpretive trail, the signs here elucidating the visitor on the natural history of the Gearhart Fen, one of the largest coastal bogs in Oregon. The Cullaby Lake Wetland Interpretive Trail begins between the park host's trailer and the Historic Lindgren House. An interpretive sign maps out the trail. Walk up a gravel maintenance road past a chain gate. In the early spring, a ditch to the left is full of blooming skunk-cabbage and darting Pacific tree dogs. An alder/sedge wetland is on your right. Sitka spruce and alders rise above skunk-cabbage to the left. Keep straight on the road up and over a low rise and through an open area ringed with blackberry. The track makes a sharp left, with noisy Highway 101 on your right screened by a line of Sitka spruce. Pass along an avenue of spruce, alder, salal, Himalayan blackberry and salmonberry. Meet a paved road, the former access to a race track, and continue straight. A Scots broom cloaked dune rises to your left and to the right, between you and Highway 101, see farm buildings and pastures. Keep straight on the paved road. Pass a line of spruce and the site of the old race track, now just an open field. The trail bends to the left between alders and willows. Walk down a salal and sedge alley and cross a wetland scented with skunk-cabbage to an elevated viewing platform with signs about the plant and wildlife. The trail continues past an act
Trail Stats
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9 m
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Photos
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