Oregon Parks Commission awards Yachats $732,000 grant to help pay for long-sought estuary boardwalk project

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – Years of effort to make safe a short but hazardous stretch of street in Yachats were rewarded Wednesday with a grant from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission.

The $732,696 grant will go toward paying for a 245-foot walkway overlooking the Yachats River estuary along Ocean View Drive between Beach Street and U.S. Highway 101.

The busy section of street, which serves as the main access for travelers turning off the highway to visit Yachats State Park, currently has only an eyebrow of a gravel path wedged between the asphalt and a steep bramble-covered slope. Walking in the road has long been the favored alternative for many pedestrians and the only choice for people with mobility issues.

“The biggest thing it means for the city of Yachats is safety,” city manager Bobbi Price said. “It’s incredibly unsafe. Especially for the amount of traffic that happens.”

A traffic study on just one day this summer – from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. July 26 — recorded 571 people, 949 vehicles, 31 bicyclists, 64 dogs and five strollers using one block portion of Ocean View Drive.

“Oregon State Parks data says that in 2023 there were 690,000 people counted at Yachats State Park,” Price said. “So this is a main corridor. And it is also one of the remaining pieces to be finished for Region 5 of the Oregon Coast Trail. So it helps complete that initiative for the state parks.”

The announcement of the grant was made Wednesday by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission during its meeting in Astoria. The commission, which oversees the Oregon State Parks & Recreation agency, uses lottery funds to award grants each year to cities, counties and park and port districts.

This year $15.7 million in grants were given to 22 recipients in 16 counties. There were 37 applications. Yachats’ application ranked ninth based on park staff’s criteria.

Yachats and Gold Beach were the only coastal cities to receive grants Wednesday. In 2022 the city of Waldport received a $750,000 grant to help build Louis Southworth Park.

What’s planned next?

The estimated cost of the walkway project is currently $925,000. The city applied for less than the total needed because applicants must provide a percentage match based on population. Additional funding will come from the city’s visitor amenity funds which are generated by motel and vacation rental lodging taxes.

The project will begin with a sidewalk across from Beach Street and then transition east to decking material that will have an elbow of an overlook with park benches and information signs about the estuary and the Indigenous history in the area. The walkway will have lighting and a thin railing that can be seen through for people in wheelchairs or sitting on the benches.

Power lines and poles on the south side of Ocean View Drive will be relocated underground to the north side of the street. Future plans call for the walkway to extend farther east to an open area and viewing platform adjacent to the former O’Neill/Landmark property recently purchased by the city.

Connecting neighborhoods, trails and parks were all touted by the city in its presentation to the parks commission following its application.

City officials are scheduled to sit down next week to work on specifications with Civil West Engineering and Survey Services, with the hope to get the project out to bid at the beginning of 2026 and hopefully start work next spring, Price said.

Years of volunteer efforts

Efforts to build safe passage along that stretch of Ocean View were ignited years ago by volunteers from Yachats Trails Committee who witnessed people walking three abreast in the middle of the road and stumbling down the slope, Price said. They took the idea to the city’s Parks and Commons Commission and then to the city council.

Trails committee member Bob Langley wrote the successful grant application.

“It’s been a pretty long-term effort so far,” Langley said. “There was a group of five or six people that were loosely members of the trails committee and part of their responsibility was to develop and recommend trails. And that was an area that was patently unsafe and still is.”

The first thought had been to build a retaining wall with a gravel walk and then the idea blossomed to a boardwalk because of how stout the wall would need to be to hold the weight of the gravel, Langley said.

“Then funding became an issue, so applying for the state parks grant seemed appropriate,” Langley said.

Langley first wrote an application for the parks grant in 2024, but it was denied because Ocean View Drive was still owned by Lincoln County. The road was finally transferred to the city in April.

The process to transfer it officially began in 2017 but ran into many obstacles. Former city manager Heide Lambert “put a total kibosh” on the project because the city did not own the road, Price said, but efforts by interim city manager Rick Sant followed by Price to get four final easements from property owners cleared the final hurdles that made the transfer possible.

Langley, who worked 120 hours on the application, said getting the grant is an intermediate step in a long and determined effort involving many people.

“There’s a lot left to be done, specifics to be nailed down in terms of design, lighting, stuff like that the engineering firm will work on,” Langley said. “It’s a nice example of a volunteer group coming up with a plan, interfacing with the city and making something that will be a nice amenity for the city going forward.”

Mayor Craig Berdie said he’s happy that safety issues in a dangerous part of the city will finally be resolved. And that it will be an asset in terms of giving visitors one more reason to stop in Yachats and get out of their cars.

“When I see people walking down Ocean View Drive with a smile on their face, I just think this is going to be another part of that whole experience of the river and the ocean,” Berdie said. “It just brings joy to my heart.”

The city can also use it to leverage with the O’Neill/Landmark property to make a more cohesive experience for visitors, he added.

“And my deepest appreciation to Bobbie and Bob Langley for the hard work that they did on getting the grant submitted and sticking to it,” Berdie said. “It’s really rewarding to see that kind of initiative get rewarded. There’s been a lot of collaboration and discussion … and a lot of parties and moving parts … and the people that did the actual work did a tremendous job.

“I can hardly wait,” he said. “It will be a long time before it actually gets done. I’m an impatient guy, but to be able to start moving forward with concrete plans is excellent.”

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com