By QUINTON SMITH/YahatsNews.com
After months of complaints by a Yachats trails user, Siuslaw National Forest officials have agreed to resolve a conflict with a homeowner on Forest Hills Street who has been blocking access to a portion of Starr Creek trail that links to the popular Ya’ Xaik trail and the Gerdemann Gardens from the north.
Andreea Ghetie’s family purchased four acres with a house and botanical gardens in 2015. A conservation easement allows the public to use a trail through the gardens.
With Forest Service permission, Ghetie put up a gate across a driveway that sits partially on Forest Service property. The driveway connects to the public Forest Hills Street and dead ends in front of her house. She also posted private property signs on nearby poles and confronted walkers who squeeze around the gate to reach the trail to the south, say forest officials and George Messersmith of Yachats.
But after months of research and pushback by Messersmith, officials now say what walkers assume is a gated, private driveway is partially on Siuslaw National Forest land.
And while the gate can remain under Ghetie’s special use permit, private property signs should come down, new “walkers allowed” signs will go up, and people should be able to walk the road without being confronted or otherwise bothered, said Michelle Holman, supervisor of the agency’s Central Coast Ranger District in Waldport.
Ghetie’s special use permit allows her to limit vehicle access in front of her home “but does not allow her to limit pedestrian access,” Holman told YachatsNews.
“She’s aware that foot traffic is allowed,” Holman said after talking with Ghetie.
The Starr Creek trail is not part of an official trail system, say Forest Service officials and the Yachats Trails Committee, but an unofficial well-used path that has been created and maintained by the public for years.
The ultimate solution, said Holman, is for the Forest Service to re-route the trail to the east of Ghetie’s property where it is more clearly on the agency’s land. That should take a year, she said.
“We need to look at options to get it away from her driveway,” Holman said.
Ghetie said Friday that her main concern was her liability if a walker gets injured while on the driveway and off-leash dogs entering the gardens or otherwise disturbing wildlife.
Messersmith began communicating with Siuslaw officials in June after he said Ghetie came out of her house to tell him he was on her property. The same thing happened to his wife a week later, Messersmith said. Once he began investigating, Messersmith heard similar complaints from others trying to use Starr Creek Trail.
“I want people to be able to use the trail,” Messersmith told YachatsNews. “You shouldn’t need her permission to walk on Forest Service land.”
Messersmith believes hikers want a more direct route and has suggested the Forest Service dig into the hillside adjacent to the road to better delineate the a trail and then erect a split-rail fence to keep walkers off the road and driveway, similar to portions of the 804 Trail in Yachats.
And while that’s preferable, he’s OK with a new trail to the east of Ghetie’s land, so long as the Forest Service builds and maintains it.
After a summer of trying to get a resolution – even emailing the agency’s head in Washington D.C. – agency officials responded by walking the property with Messersmith, talking with Ghetie and coming up with the proposal to move the trail to the east.
“It’s definitely doable,” Holman said.
