Courtesy of Race Jones
If you know where to look, the Oregon coast contains traces of geologic history everywhere. From sculpted cliffs of eroded volcanic rock to the moss-coated Pacific Coast Mountain Ranges, there is no shortage of geologic wonders scattered across this landscape.
While visiting the coastal town of Yachats, Oregon, this summer, I met a local man on a windy path that ran along a rocky beach. He told me about a massive redwood stump he had found, a little ways down the path. He called it a “ghost stump” and claimed that it had been rooted there for hundreds of years. I clambered down the path into the rocky ballast tide pool and found the stump he had mentioned, now gray with age, its roots still gripping the sand. I wondered how in the world a tree like this could grow so close to the waterline. After some research, I discovered there are actually entire ghost forests along the Oregon coast where centuries-old stumps still stand in the sand or even in the tide. The ancient catastrophe that downed these trees is the very same one sending home insurance prices soaring today — the Cascadia earthquake.
Spanning the coast of the Pacific Northwest, submerged in the cold waters of the Pacific is the Cascadia subduction zone, a 700-mile stretch where two tectonic plates meet. The oceanic plate is tucked snugly under the continental plate — so snugly that over the last 200 million years, massive amounts of tension have built up, and eventually the continental plate will snap under the pressure. This is predicted to lead to a megathrust earthquake along the coast with an estimated magnitude of 9.0, and would cause the continental plate to sink. The Oregon coast is predicted to sink around six feet. The last time this earthquake took place, the coast sank more than twenty feet, submerging forests into the ocean. 325 years ago, this same phenomenon uncovered many of the ghost forests we are able to see today.
Not only are these ghost forests evidence of this seismic event, but Indigenous stories from all around the PNW also point to an enormous tsunami, a terrifying earthquake and the coast sinking into the waves around this time. Among the stories of the Hoh and Quileute People of the Olympic Peninsula, a recurring legend of a battle between Thunderbird and Whale is retold. According to archivists at Oregon State University, Thunderbird, a great bird said to create lightning with his eyes and winds with his wings, flies over the ocean to find an island to rest upon. When he finally settles upon a rocky island, the land beneath him stirs. The rocky shores lurch, and it is revealed that the island is, in fact, Whale. A great struggle ensues. In one telling, the great fight caused the water to draw back and then flood the shore, and “numerous sea monsters and whales were left on dry land. Also, each time that the waters rose, the people took to their canoes and floated off as the winds and currents wafted them, as there was neither sun nor land to guide them.” Could this myth, told all along the Washington coast, actually be recounting the time when two continental plates stirred the ocean and thrust marine life onto land?
The Hoh and Quileute are not the only peoples who tell such stories. In Coos mythology, similar accounts exist of people escaping the great flood by hitching their canoes to the tops of trees. A story from Jim Buckanan, translated in 1909, recounts that the only people who survived were those who had canoes and braided ropes and could tie their canoes to the tops of the trees that stuck out from the water. Families and tribes were scattered by the waves and ended up settling in different places. The animals, people and birds alike all flocked to the little pieces of land that peered out of the water. Dozens of other stories about a great flood or earthquake exist from tribes along the Cascadia subduction zone. This knowledge, carried by Indigenous peoples, helps to connect us to a history older than written records.
If you ever visit the Oregon coast, search for a ghost stump. Although they stand as a chilling reminder of the earthquake that looms over us all, let them also be a reminder of our changing planet and the slow-working forces that created the coast we see today. The Earth, in its natural power, has moved ancient forests, altered coastlines, and shaken history.
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