16 min
Overview
Fogarty Creek State Recreation Area is a picturesque day-use site set on a small cove and beach and bisected by a creek crossed by three footbridges. Short trails lead out under Highway 101 to the beach. You can extend your walk in two other directions. The first is a steep gravel maintenance road that leads up a forested ridge to a water tank; the second is via the Oregon Coast Trail route to Fishing Rock, a lava promontory where you have a good chance of spotting seals, sea lions, and various seabirds. John Fogarty was a Lincoln County commissioner and judge who moved to Yaquina Bay in 1884. Walk from the restrooms back near the creek, passing one footbridge. At the far corner of the parking lot, see another bridge over Fogarty Creek. Cross the bridge, and take the paved trail that winds through a picnic area and past a gazebo to the road coming into South Fogarty Creek. To your left, you’ll see a gravel maintenance track rising into the forest between two fenced enclosures. Head up this road, and pass a green gate to enter a secondary forest of Sitka spruce and western red-cedar. Large stumps attest to former logging operations here; you might find some rusting logging cable lying just off the road. Deer fern verges the track as you walk steeply up to a water tank on the state park boundary. Behind the water tank, fringed by a wood of alder, hemlock, and cedar, you can see through a cyclone fence to clear-cut hills. Return to the South Fogarty picnic area, and walk up along the creek under scattered Sitka spruce to pass under Highway 101. At the beach, which is composed of dark, coarse sand, go left towards the headland, and get views of Rabbit Rock, which is connected to the beach at low tide by a tombolo, or sand bridge. (The rock supposedly resembles a reclining rabbit, with the ear on the north side.) Return north up the beach, getting views of offshore rocks. Cross the creek – at some times of the tide or season, this could mean a ford – and reach the colorful mudstone cliffs at its north end bel
Trail Stats
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79 m
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Photos
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