KERNVILLE — At the Siletz Bay National Wildlife Refuge two miles south of Lincoln City is a quiet trail that meanders along timeworn dykes to a vast tidal marsh teeming with wildlife and trophy-sized fish.

Looping around 10-acre Alder Island, the half-mile path wanders into a forgotten world where farmers once eked-out a muddy living. More than a hundred years ago hardy settlers defied nature by erecting a ring levy around the island to create pasture. By the 1980s, however, remnants of only one house remained.

In 2008, the so-called Schoen property was added to the national wildlife refuge in a $150,000 transaction. Total cost of restoring the island and building the trail, which begins at a dramatic rock-masonry kiosk with ample parking, was $300,000. The trail and interpretive center opened in 2016.

Volunteer labor, provided by the Salmon Drift Creek Watershed Council, Ducks Unlimited, Tillamook Anglers and the Oregon Hunters Association, gives the trail its hand-carved feel. The work included restoration of the marsh with culverts, new channels, natural plants and bioswales.
Most people see the interpretive park as blur from the busy highway, but visitors will discover wildlife-friendly native plants with blooms for hummingbirds or fruit for wildlife such as hot-pink flowering currants and red elderberries that leave the place abuzz with the sound of honeybees.

The 10-acre interpretive park puts walkers where only canoes and kayaks could venture before. Typical scenes might include the wing-slapping racket of ducks on take-off, raptors clutching their prey or a blacktail deer rubbing antlers on a copse of alders. Elk often browse in the distance while trout and starry flounders fin the shallows at low tide.

“There’s a Merganser, red-breasted,” whispered Robert Palomar, a birdwatcher from Portland who huddled with his wife, Judy, behind tree branches dripping with moss. “And a Bufflehead, there. We’ve also seen a lot of birds of prey — look, a red-tailed hawk!”

The site’s dedication to wildlife exasperates some pet owners, but U.S. Fish & Wildlife “trail stewards” are serious about a ban on dogs which can be rough on songbirds and wildlife.

Halfway into the walk is a flat shore on the lower Siletz River for bank-fishing — a secret spot known to produce salmon and cutthroat trout. Another honey hole is the “fishy-looking” canal called No-Name Slough.

Because it’s short and flat, the trail is popular with families and older people — anybody, really, that wants to hear songbirds, watch bald eagles and see the natural wonders of a tidal marsh.

According to the Native Fish Society, a consortium of river stewards and fishing groups, the 67-mile-long Siletz River and nearby bay boasts “the greatest diversity of fish species on the Oregon Coast.”

The 567-acre Siletz Bay National Wildlife Refuge is located on the south side of the Siletz River Bridge, on Highway 101, two miles south of Lincoln City. For more information, call USFWS at 541-867-4550.