Yachats River steps — Park rangers Andrew Althauser, left, and Rod Mongenel finish rebuilding the wooden portion of steps leading to the beach along the south side of the Yachats River on Tuesday. The steps were washed out during a February story.

The steps to one of Yachats’ most popular beaches reopened Tuesday afternoon.

A crew from Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department finished two days of work to replace the wooden steps leading to the wide, sandy beach that makes up the Yachats River bay.

The steps were knocked out during a storm in February.

The wood steps lead from a parking area along Yachats Ocean Road to a permanent concrete stairway and then to the beach.

State parks had to delay replacing the steps until it got permission from its archeologist. The top of the wood steps sits on a Native American shell midden that is registered as an archeologically significant site, said Dylan Anderson, who manages state parks in the area.

There are numerous middens – basically dumps for shells and other material used by Native American encampments hundreds of years ago — along the south side of the river.

“Anywhere humans like to live now, they liked to live then,” Anderson said.

The problem this spring was that people trying to access the beach were causing more damage to midden along the bank than replacing a portion of the steps on of them.

“There was a bit of common sense involved,” he said. “Were we doing more damage by not fixing it than people were doing trying to get down to the beach?

“It was an extremely important beach access to get open,” Anderson said.