Depoe Bay Hike

Overview

South of Lincoln City, the small city of Depoe Bay is squeezed between the hills and the lava ocean front of a small bay. A narrow channel leads in from the bay to the world’s smallest navigable harbor. A walk along the sea wall here allows you to view the pillow lavas that protect the harbor and wait for the frequent eruptions of a spouting horn. You can also take in the sandstone formations on the headland to the north and let yourself down by rope to a pocket beach. A short trail takes you around the ocean face of the headland to get views of Pirate Cove. Depoe Bay is named for “Depot” Charley, a Tututni (Lower Rogue River) Indian whose family was forcibly removed north to the vast Coast Indian Reservation, now the much-reduced Siletz Indian Reservation; Charley had been allotted the land that is now the site of the town. Take the steps down to the Whale Watching Center at the south end of the seawall, just before the Highway 101 bridge. There’s a viewing platform just to the left of the center which overlooks the channel into Depoe Bay Harbor, billed as the world’s smallest harbor. The tight chasm here is also the outlet for Depoe Bay Creek and was a deep and narrow gorge during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower. Incoming vessels “shoot the hole” to reach the harbor. The single-span Conde McCullough bridge takes Highway 101 over the gap. The Whale Watching Center itself is a state park, and volunteers are here at the peak time of gray whale migrations: mid-December to mid-January, when up to 60,000 whales migrate south to waters off Baja California; and the prolonged spring migration, from late March to June. A resident pod of the whales can often be seen in the bay from spring into fall. The building itself is open more reliably in the summer: there are exhibits and explanations inside. Keep walking up the sidewalk along the seawall. Below you are dark pillow lavas from the Grand Ronde member of the Columbia River Basalt flows (17 to 15.6 million years ago), the same flows that form th

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Photos

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