PLANTING EXPERIMENTS ON THE SAND-DUNES OF THE 

 OREGON COAST 



By Thornton T. Hunger 

 Forest Examiner, Forest Service 



Along a portion of the Oregon coast fronting on the Pacific Ocean 

 is a line of sand-dunes which in height, rapidity of movement, and ex- 

 tensiveness rival those of any other part of the United States. This 

 strip of sand wastes varies from one-half mile to two miles in width. 

 In places there are wide flats across which the sand is driven before the 

 almost daily southwest or northwest winds without forming dunes ; in 

 other places it piles up in large hills, some of them over loo feet high, 

 which move inland, encroaching upon and burying forests and cran- 

 berry marshes. At the mouths of several of the large rivers which 

 enter the ocean diagonally the sand which drifts across the spits into 

 the harbors is a serious economic obstacle to the maintenance of a 

 proper channel depth. The most extensive and uninterrupted stretch 

 of sand-dunes is between the Siuslaw River and Coos Bay, a distance 

 of 40 miles, most of which is within the Siuslaw National Forest. 



Because of the economic desirability of checking this sand move- 

 ment and putting this waste territory into productive use, a reconnais- 

 sance study of the region was made by the Forest Service in 1910. 

 One of the interesting things brought out in this study is the fact that 

 many of the old dunes — which for some unknown reason had been 

 checked in their progress after getting about so far back from the 

 coast — are well reclothed with herbage, brush, and even with a forest 

 of lodgepole pine (shore pine) and other species. In places on the 

 inter-dune flats a thrifty herbage is occupying the ground, even in spite 

 of considerable constant sand movement. It is apparent that condi- 

 tions here are normally rather favorable for vegetation : the precipita- 

 tion is 100 inches or so a year, it is well distributed, and the tempera- 

 tures throughout the year are equable. 



The old settlers state that originally there was much more herbage 

 on the less active dunes and on the inter-dune flats than now, the rea- 

 son for its decline being the cattle which had been allowed to roam 

 over the dune country. Apparently under the unrestricted grazing of 

 stock the natural herbage had been tramped out, pulled up or browsed 



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