By BRYCE DOYLE/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Tillamook County has long been known as Oregon’s dairy capital. More than a million people visit the local creamery each year. Its products can be found in grocery stores nationwide.
Within the next decade, however, something else could bring people here in droves — mountain biking.
The U.S. Forest Service is in the final stages of approving a vast new mountain biking trail system near Sandlake, an unincorporated community between two popular coastal state parks, Cape Kiwanda and Cape Lookout.
The plan for now: 23 miles of new trails, eight miles of roads converted to trails, a three-acre skills park and four parking areas. Construction could take years to complete, project proponents say. A forest service spokesperson said it could take a decade.
The project’s supporters say this system would be the ideal place to mountain bike year-round, fueling the region’s economy and providing a way for people — young people, particularly — to connect with nature.
“I want my grandkids to be able to go ride this place someday, and I think we can all agree on that,” said Ron Baker, secretary of the Tillamook Off-Road Trail Alliance, a local nonprofit spearheading the project. “But we gotta do it right.”
Not everyone’s optimistic. Some Sandlake locals say this area is already overrun with tourists, and that it lacks the resources and infrastructure to manage more.
“During the height of the season, it’s just going to be a constant user conflict,” said Adam Rasmussen, a resident of Sandlake, about a 20-minute drive from Tillamook. “It’s going be a traffic nightmare. I just don’t see how it works.”
Thousands of people flock here, one of the state’s most scenic stretches of coastline near Pacific City, to fish, hike, camp, surf and ride dune buggies. It’s home to a variety of wildlife, including elk and deer, and critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, which is threatened, and the marbled murrelet, which is endangered. (A forest service spokesperson said the project includes measures to avoid impacting the birds’ habitat.)
The tension the proposed mountain biking system has created is similar to those facing rural communities across the American West. And the local debate raises a broader question: Can recreation and tourism be the new economic backbone of communities that were once supported by logging and timber?
Tourism drives Tillamook County
In addition to the dairy industry, logging mills were once the economic backbone of Tillamook County’s communities. But about three decades ago, the industry crumbled. Mills shut down. Many people lost their jobs.
“To fill the void, tourism has really moved into Tillamook County,” said County Commissioner Doug Olson.
A multi-million dollar industry, tourism is now an economic lifeline in Tillamook County. It’s the second-largest financial contributor to the county’s road department, Olson said. In 2013, voters approved a tax on room rentals, and in the following decade, annual revenue surged in unincorporated areas like Sandlake.
Business owners and employees in downtown Tillamook say they can’t survive without the rush of visitors during the warmer months. Some are excited about the prospect of new mountain bikers coming to the area, especially after the pandemic shuttered some businesses.
“I think it’ll be huge,” said Brittany Naegeli, who works at an art gallery downtown. “I think it will be a really big step in the right direction for Tillamook County, because there’s so much of this county that is dying off without tourism.”
But Olson says tourism also places a burden on the county’s limited resources, including roads and public safety. He noted that, under the state’s transient lodging tax, 30% of the revenue generated can go toward county services, while 70% must go back toward supporting tourism itself.
“That’s one of the big issues with tourism,” Olson said. “Do they pay their way? The answer is: probably not. But they do bring jobs.”
Joanie Schmidgall, a public affairs officer with the Siuslaw National Forest, said in an email that the Forest Service doesn’t know how much the project will cost. Schmidgall said the project would “likely be funded by a combination of grants and volunteer work.”
“I can see the possibility that you bring in more people for whatever reason — good reasons — that overwhelm the system,” said Olson, adding “And not everybody hauls out his own trash.”
Growing pains
On a recent sunny day, Rasmussen drove his silver pickup truck up a steep dirt road through the lush forest near his home in Sandlake. He passed two elk, parked his car, hiked up a hill and reached a point with stunning views: Sea cliffs. Sand dunes. A sprawling estuary. The Pacific Ocean.
“I think you can kind of see what their vision is here,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
A mountain biker himself, Rasmussen used to support the prospect of a trail near his home. Now he feels differently. In May, he was among a group of 30 people who signed a letter to the Forest Service, urging federal regulators to reassess the project’s potential impacts and how many people might use the trail system.
Schmidgall, the spokesperson, said the Forest Service is doing that.
“We aren’t arguing over what a lot in the Forest Service want to call a trivial trailhead in the middle of an unknown forest,” said Rasmussen, who noted that other mountain biking trail systems in Oregon draw hundreds of thousands of people each year. “It’s a massive undertaking.”
In the view of some Sandlake locals, the Forest Service and the project’s proponents aren’t making thorough plans for what’s to come. Already, they say, ambulances fly up and down the area’s single road during the summer. There’s no cell phone service. Traffic can be overwhelming.
“I know what it’s going to be like,” said Buck Miller, who lives on Sandlake Road at the foot of the proposed system. “It’s going to be worse than it is now.”
His wife, Kathleen Miller, agreed. Over the past 10 years, she said she has seen the area become a recreation destination, with the sounds of nearby dune buggies echoing into their home. In December, she noted, a landslide covered Sandlake Road, between Tierra Del Mar and Pacific City, closing it for about three months and leaving area residents with one exit road. Like others, she’s concerned about how locals will manage with even more people.
“I see a big change coming,” said Kathleen Miller, adding: “You’re not going to change progress. You just gotta make sure you’re prepared for it. And we’re not down in Tillamook County. At all.”
Connecting to the coast
The Nestucca Valley School District, in southern Tillamook County near Sandlake, has about 550 students enrolled. Behind the school is a large mountain biking skills course.
Misty Wharton, the school superintendent, is not a mountain biker herself. But as a lifelong resident who has seen this region change, she is willing to embrace that evolution. In fact, she plans to build a five-mile mountain biking trail to connect the local K-8 building to the high school, and further trails after that.
“I think that we’re at the point in that transformation where we don’t have the infrastructure we need yet,” she said. “And so it can be a little bit scary to those that are living here, because it’s happening so quickly.”
Wharton and other supporters of the project acknowledge there will be significant challenges as the region morphs into a bicyclists’ destination. But they say it could provide significant economic benefits to the area, creating jobs and connecting youths with the environment.
“I think more access to trails for kids is one of the best things we can do for them,” said Baker, of the mountain biking non-profit.
As Baker and other nonprofit members stood beside the course on a recent day, their kids whirred by on mountain bikes. They argued that mountain bikers are often mindful of taking care of natural spaces. They said they have taken years to plan the project thoroughly and that building it would occur in phases, giving them enough time to make sure it’s done carefully.
“We’re stewards of this area,” said Baker. “This area has a deep meaning to all of us, and we don’t want to see it get ruined.”
He added, “We get that there’s neighbors down below that this is going to have an impact on. We want to minimize that as much as we can.”
Schmidgall, the spokesperson, said the Forest Service doesn’t have a firm timeline for its final decision on the project, but noted it could take months.
- This story originally appeared June 22, 2024 on Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Mountain Biking and Trail-Building Destroy Wildlife Habitat
The major harm that mountain biking does is that it greatly extends the human footprint (distance that one can travel) in wildlife habitat. E-bikes multiply that footprint even more. Neither should be allowed on any unpaved trail. Wildlife, if they are to survive, MUST receive top priority. There is no good reason to allow bicycles on any unpaved trail!
Bicycles should not be allowed in any natural area. They are inanimate objects and have no rights. There is also no right to mountain bike. That was settled in federal court in 1996: https://mjvande.info/mtb10.htm . It’s dishonest of mountain bikers to say that they don’t have access to trails closed to bikes. They have exactly the same access as everyone else — on foot. Why isn’t that good enough for mountain bikers?
Why do mountain bikers always insist on creating illegal trails? It’s simple: they ride so fast that they see almost nothing of what they are passing. Therefore, they quickly get bored with any given trail and want another and another, endlessly! (In other words, mountain biking is inherently boring.)
A favorite myth of mountain bikers is that mountain biking is no more harmful to wildlife, people, and the environment than hiking, and that science supports that view. Of course, it’s not true. To settle the matter once and for all, I read all of the research they cited, and wrote a review of the research on mountain biking impacts (see https://mjvande.info/scb7.htm ). I found that of the seven studies they cited, (1) all were written by mountain bikers, and (2) in every case, the authors misinterpreted their own data, in order to come to the conclusion that they favored. They also studiously avoided mentioning another scientific study (Wisdom et al) which did not favor mountain biking, and came to the opposite conclusions.
Mountain bikers also love to build new trails – legally or illegally. Of course, trail-building destroys wildlife habitat – not just in the trail bed, but in a wide swath to both sides of the trail! E.g. grizzlies can hear a human from one mile away, and smell us from 5 miles away. Thus, a 10-mile trail represents 100 square miles of destroyed or degraded habitat, that animals are inhibited from using. Mountain biking, trail building, and trail maintenance all increase the number of people in the park, thereby preventing the animals’ full use of their habitat. See https://mjvande.info/scb9.htm for details.
Mountain biking accelerates erosion, creates V-shaped ruts, kills small animals and plants on and next to the trail, drives wildlife and other trail users out of the area, and, worst of all, teaches kids that the rough treatment of nature is okay. It is not.
The latest craze among mountain bikers is the creation of “pump tracks” (bike parks). They are alleged to teach bicycling skills, but what they actually teach are “skills” (skidding, jumping (“getting air”), racing, etc.) that are appropriate nowhere. If you believe that these “skills” won’t be practiced throughout the rest of the park and in all other parks, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.
The common thread among those who want more recreation in our parks is total ignorance about and disinterest in the wildlife whose homes these parks are. Yes, if humans are the only beings that matter, it is simply a conflict among humans (but even then, allowing bikes on trails harms the majority of park users — hikers and equestrians — who can no longer safely and peacefully enjoy their parks).
The parks aren’t gymnasiums or racetracks or even human playgrounds. They are wildlife habitat, which is precisely why they are attractive to humans. Activities such as mountain biking, that destroy habitat, violate the charter of the parks.
Even kayaking and rafting, which give humans access to the entirety of a water body, prevent the wildlife that live there from making full use of their habitat, and should not be allowed. Of course those who think that only humans matter won’t understand what I am talking about — an indication of the sad state of our culture and educational system.
Mike Vandeman, Ph.D.
I like that first picture and comment “Sand lake lush forest, etc. with a nasty clear cut in the foreground. With the Yahats clearcut coming this is the look of our future. Very bleak indeed…