No need to be petrified of Oregan’s Ghost Forest

Posted by Elise Kirsten on 25 November 2019

The Neskowin ‘Ghost Forest’ is the petrified remains of a 2,000-year-old Sitka spruce forest found along the coast of Oregan in the United States.

Described as ‘one of the eeriest and most fascinating natural phenomena in Oregon’ the forest was once buried by an earthquake.

The tops of the stumps were then exposed when massive storms swept away sand in the northern hemisphere’s winter of 1997–1998.

According to The Oregonian ‘Some locals attest that the forest was visible for decades, but it didn’t gain popularity until the winter of 1997-1998, when storms pummeled the coast and uncovered some of the trees.’

The 100 or so stumps can be seen year-round during low tide and exceptionally low tides reveal even more than usual of the petrified forest.

To find the forest from the Neskowin Beach parking lot, visitors need to walk along the beach past Proposal Rock (in a southerly direction) and cross a small stream and then the stumps will be visible rising out of the sand.

 

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Ghost Forest… #neskowinghostforest

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#OR #neskowinghostforest #pomskypuppy #pomsky #proposalrock

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Landscapes are not my forte. I may work for a magazine that has the word, geography, in its name, but I am a photographer of people, our human condition. When working on a story that needs to include geography, I tend to panic trying to comprehend the enormity of space. Once I went to Neskowin, Oregon, for a story on the science of paleotsunamis. I spent three days photographing stumps of a Sitka spruce forest that were buried over 2,000 years ago when an earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone abruptly lowered the trees, covering them in mud. On occasion, this ancient forest reappears, and at low tide, an eerie landscape of beauty appears. Somehow I think this landscape of a once-forested land worked, a reminder of how alive our earth is, and how we need to care for it better because nature can easily remove us, as easily as this ghost forest. – @natgeo @natgeocreative #oregon #neskowin #neskowinghostforest #ghostforest #trees #pacifcocean #paleotsunami #science #waves #dawn #nature

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Image credit: treasurechestmemories/ Instagram

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