By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews
The crush of coast-bound Spring Break campers is coming and Dylan Anderson knows it.
Anderson, coastal operations manager for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, has for weeks been leading the way in getting coastal campgrounds ready for thousands of visitors.
The effort includes hiring scores of new seasonal employees, ensuring that long buttoned-up facilities are ready for the incoming crush and continuing with clean up from winter storm damage that still has some campgrounds closed or only partially ready for occupancy.
“This really marks the kickoff to our entire spring and summer season at the coast,” Anderson told YachatsNews. “It’s an incredibly busy time and, obviously, we have a lot of challenges that need addressing.”
Beverly Beach State Park just north of Newport, for instance, won’t reopen until July 1, when crews are scheduled to complete extensive renovations to the site’s water lines and power infrastructure. That means weeks of waiting before campers can take advantage of Beverly Beach’s 53 full hook up sites, 76 electrical sites with water and 128 tent sites.
Several camping loops at South Beach State Park, situated just south of Yaquina Bay, are still being spruced up to accommodate the thousands of campers who visit the area each season.
And Carl G. Washburne Memorial State Park, located 10 miles south of Yachats, remains partly closed due to winter storm damage.
The effects of those closures and limitations mean the remaining camping areas, including South Beach State Park’s open areas, Beachside State Park and Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park near Florence, will be expecting even more traffic than normal.
“In the best of conditions, it takes us two to three weeks of maintenance time to get everything ready,” he said. “But we are very confident that things will be largely open and ready for spring break. As always, it’s a very exciting time to be on the Oregon coast.”
Soaring use
A few statistics are all it takes to remind Anderson that state park use both along the coast and around the state are at near all-time highs.
Year-end numbers recently released by Oregon State Parks rocketed 2023 to the second-busiest year on record. Only 2021, with its pandemic that kept people closer to home, recorded higher visitation rates.
Last year an estimated 52.2 million day-visits were recorded across the state’s 180 parks, historic sites and natural areas. That edged above 2022’s 52.1 million visits, but was shy of 2021’s record-setting 53.6 million.
The same trend played out on the coast, where a total of 84 sites attracted 29.97 million visits last year, up considerably from 28.8 million in 2022. The record remains the 31.4 million visits in 2021.
Across all state offerings, coastal parks accounted for seven of the top 10 day-use parks, and eight of the top 10 campgrounds.
“It’s very obvious that folks love to come to the beach for camping and leisure,” Anderson said. “And it’s our job to make sure everything is ready to accommodate them.”
Hiring challenges
State parks campground managers, including Brian Fowler at South Beach State Park, have spent considerable time over the past several weeks interviewing for the seasonal employees they will need to oversee this camping season. Two-thirds of hiring by Oregon State Parks is seasonal, agency officials said, so Spring Break is a special challenge since most of the seasonal help comes aboard later in the year.
Managers say the burden of finding sufficient staffers is as challenging as ever, given the lack of affordable coast housing for workers.
The shortage is so acute in some areas that growing numbers of employees are commuting to the coast every day from Willamette Valley towns such as Corvallis, Philomath and Albany.
“That’s obviously a huge commitment of their personal time to devote up to three or even four hours a day just getting to and from work,” Anderson said. “But we take a lot of pride in the fact that someone would make that kind of commitment to our programs.”
In all, anywhere from 125 to 150 new seasonal rangers and ranger assistant positions will be filled between now and early June for work at coastal campgrounds, he said.
Reservations recommended
For anyone contemplating a coastal camping vacation over spring break or beyond, Anderson strongly urged taking the time to make a reservation. That’s because the most popular campgrounds, despite offering hundreds of tent and RV sites, fill to capacity every weekend through summer’s end.
That was the case last weekend – which came with beautiful, sunny weather – at South Beach and Beachside State Park north of Yachats when both filled Friday night.
And upwards of 98 percent of all of those campers will have booked their spots in advance.
One increasingly popular option is for anyone heading to the coast without a reservation to go online and see if an opening has suddenly sprung up due to cancellation, Anderson said.
So-called “same day” reservations mean that people will likely get only one assured night of camping, but at least they won’t have to go the old route of stopping in at every campground they come to just to see if anything is open.
“In the event there are cancellations, we get new bookings before we ever realize there’s been a cancellation,” Anderson said. “That just shows how incredibly popular our state parks are as destination points.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
Busiest state campgrounds
- Fort Stevens State Park, Warrenton: Camper nights: 305,846; Percent Change: -4%
- South Beach State Park, Newport: Camper nights: 217,447; Percent Change: +1%
- Nehalem Bay State Park, Nehalem: Camper nights: 189,843; Percent Change: -3%
- Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park, Florence: Camper nights: 179,352; Percent Change: 0%
- Cape Lookout State Park, Tillamook: Camper nights: 139,826; Percent Change: +2%
Busiest day-use parks
- Harris Beach State Park, Brookings: Visitors: 1,784,420; Percent Change: +12%
- Yaquina Bay State Recreation Site, Newport: Visitors: 1,734,802; Percent Change: -27%
- Valley of the Rogue State Recreation Area: Visitors: 1,568,160; Percent Change: -27%
- Oswald West State Park, Arch Cape: Visitors: 1,481,968; Percent Change: +53%
- Tolovana State Park, Cannon Beach: Visitors: 1,246,814; Percent Change: +23%
- The Oregonian/OregonLive
So many people are evading the park closed signs and barricades at Beverly Beach State Park, that rangers in the last few days erected a nice big chain link fence across the entrance to keep spring breakers out.
If you think it’s hard to find seasonal help, you should consider how hard it is to hire full time talent, the wages are remarkably low considering the cost of living. Oregon is definitely under paying its state parks staff.