16 min
Overview
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, landowners diked and drained tidal wetlands and flood plains to create rich pastures for dairy cattle. In doing so, they destroyed entire ecosystems and salmon spawning sites. At South Clatsop Slough, a recent addition to the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, the National Park Service converted a tide gate into a road bridge in 2007 and, in 2012, dug channels in the 47-acre wetland to provide habitat for salmon smolts. Beginning at the Fort Clatsop Trailhead, you’ll soon join the 1.5 mile South Slough Trail, which takes you around the edge of the cattail wetland and then over a forested ridge to join the Netul River Trail on the Lewis and Clark River. Go into the Visitor Center to pay your entrance fee, which is good for seven days. Then walk back across the parking area to a hiker/picnic table sign. Keep right to walk through a picnic area, and reach a four-way junction. Take the middle trail, the Clay Pit Trail. This narrow, undulating, rooty trail takes you through a dark Sitka spruce/western hemlock wood of ponds and ditches that were dug out to supply low-grade clay for making bricks in the first half of the 20th century. Dense thickets of salmonberry and drooping slopes of sword fern and deer fern add to the lush ambience. Take a steep stepped trail up, and wind through younger forest to reach the junction with the Fort to Sea Trail. Go right here, and cross Fort Clatsop Road to follow a gravel tread through thickets of salal and a wounded woodland of conifers snapped off during the Great Coastal Gale of December 2007. Foxglove and elderberry thrive in the sunny spots. Cross a footbridge, and keep left at the Fort to Sea-Kwis Kwis Trail East Junction. The Fort to Sea Trail rises gently through more storm-damaged forest to reach Perkins Road and the South Clatsop Slough Trailhead, which has a vault toilet. The South Slough Trail descends from the gate on the road through a salal understory. Head up a set of trail steps, and then drop to cross a small cr
Trail Stats
0.0 km
82 m
51 m
0 m
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Photos
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