Making a point

Kilchis Point offers a stroll through coastal history

Vanessa and John Cowit with John Jr.

By Gretchen Ammerman

Oregon Coast TODAY

There are plenty of outdoor trails on the Oregon Coast where you can challenge your quads and wear out your glutes, but sometimes a person just wants to walk, or has challenges that make a nice, flat trail with paving stones and gravel beds a welcome sight.

It has been roughly a decade since a 200-acre site at Kilchis Point, located on the shores of Tillamook Bay at the south edge of Bay City, was deeded to the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, which has been improving the park since.

“The land was donated to us for restoration because they didn’t want it to go to a developer,” Administrative Assistant Ruby Fry-Matson said. “We’ve really worked hard to make it a place where people of any ability can enjoy a nice walk and learn about the rich history of the area.”

I visited recently after an absence of roughly five years and arrived to discover a brand new and quite large parking area, a necessity as, according to Fry-Matson, the park now gets as many as 15,000 visitors a year.

“The numbers have at least doubled since we started the project,” she said.

I leashed Scout the dog and we headed out on the lovingly tended series of paths that wind through an area that once supported one of the Oregon Coast’s largest Native American settlements, became home to Tillamook County’s first white settler, and was the birthplace of the first ship registered in the Oregon Territory.

I noticed that the many interpretive signs that now line the paths, all with photos, seemed to be in chronological order.

“We wanted to create a history walk through time,” Fry-Matson said.

One of the point’s many intriguing stories is that of Joseph Champion, who arrived in Tillamook Bay by whaling ship in 1851. Champion reportedly received a warm welcome from Chief Kilchis of the Tillamook tribe, who suggested the new arrival make his home inside a massive, hollow spruce stump until he could build a more permanent house. Champion agreed, adding a roof to and planting flowers around the stump, which he referred to as his “castle.”

If there is any question as to whether the project to develop the site was embraced by the community, one simply has to count the impressive number of benches built using donated funds, each with a plaque in memoriam or, less somberly, in celebration. One particularly cute bench, which I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of Scout sitting on, was to commemorate a young man’s fourth birthday.

“I think we have at least 50 benches at this point,” Fry-Matson said. “We even have a really tall bench in honor of a seven-foot-tall gentleman. But they also need to be taken care of, that’s where the donations come in handy.”

After roughly three quarters of a mile, the trail we were on spit us out onto a small beach with a sweeping view of the Tillamook Bay and the point’s rich wildlife, which includes endangered salmon and other anadromous fish as well as herons and bald eagles.

There we met the Cowit family: Vanessa, John and John Jr., Tillamook locals who have been coming to the park for years and have seen the growth in visitation.

“We originally started coming here to hide painted rocks,” Vanessa said. “But we keep coming back because it’s nice that the trail is longer than many of the other similar ones that aren’t hilly so we can get a good walk in.”

There are still painted rocks to be found in the park, thanks to the Facebook group, Tillamook Co. Rocks and camp host Connie Kelly.

Other happenings at the park include events in the large gazebo that overlooks the bay.

“We’ve had weddings out at the gazebo,” Fry-Matson said. “A lot of people have developed a real connection to this place.”

But, as with many other things, there are a few people who must grumble.

“We have actually heard about people complaining that it’s not a true hiking trail because it’s so flat,” Fry-Matson said. “But that’s the beauty of it, it's a walking trail. There are plenty of hiking trails around if you want that.”

The rules are few but include no motorized vehicles, including electric bikes; cleaning up after your pet; and obeying the speed limit signs. Because, to quote a sign in the new parking lot, “Only you can prevent speed bumps.”

Kilchis Point is located at the south edge of Bay City, turn west on to Warren Street opposite the ReStore building Admission is free. To help support the trail paving effort, go to www.indiegogo.com and search for “Kilchis Point”

Visit the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum at 2106 2nd Street, Tillamook, to get more insight into the area’s rich and varied history.