Wrong Trailhead, Right Mountain - Neahkahnie Mountain

Wrong Trailhead, Right Mountain – Neahkahnie Mountain

Radd Icenoggle

June 7, 2021

Hiking 2021,Oregon 2021

The name Neah-Kah-Nie comes from the Tillamook, and is often translated as “the place of the god”, and when looking down onto the coast from the peak, this name makes all the sense in the world. And it really is the spectacularly dramatic views that give this hike its notoriety. Standing 1,600 feet above the beach, Neahkahnie Mountain gave us a breathtaking view of the crescent beach near Manzanita below, the sprawling Nehalem River estuary, and the tree-capped peaks of the Tillamook Coast

The Hike

The Oregon Coast Trail crosses Neahkahnie Mountain, so you can access the summit ridge viewpoint from the north or the south. We chose to start from the south, but we accidentally selected a trailhead that added an additional 2-miles (both coming and going) through a timber sale. Guess we needed to extra exercise.

Once the trail entered into an older forest, it switchbacked several times under a canopy of secondary-growth Sitka spruce. Several mountain beaver burrows were seen on the uphill side of the path. As the trail continued to climb, it became increasingly more eroded and rootier. Coast fawn lily, Oregon iris, and Pacific trilliums were in bloom on this drizzly spring day. A sketchy last switchback takes you to a rock face where we scrambled right up a rocky fin to the Neahkahnie Mountain Viewpoint. The view takes in the town of Manzanita below and the expanse of the Oregon coast to the south.

The Treasure of Neahkahnie Mountain

The “lost treasure” of Neahkahnie Mountain has been searched for by hundreds of people over the years, some treasure hunters became so overcome with the gold fever that in the 1930s, two would-be booty billionaires died when their poorly thought-out excavation caved in on them.

The legend dates back to the mid-1800s when the first trappers arrived with claims that the mountain conceals a treasure, hidden by 16th-century Spanish sailors. The story goes that the sailors carried a chest up Neahkahnie Mountain, dug a hole, and lowered the treasure inside (like every lost booty story ever). But wait, there’s a twist. One of the sailors skewered an African slave with his sword and threw the body on top of the treasure as a deterrence to those that might disturb the man’s grave or the treasure (bad mojo).

Now before you go off to seek your fortune, digging for treasure is prohibited by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

Like all good legends, this tale starts with a nugget of fact. In all likelihood, Spanish ships probably visited this area by the 16th century, including the 1543 voyage of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo reached California and, under Bartolomé Ferrelo, might have reached the Oregon coast. The 1774 voyage of Juan Pérez was the first European voyage to have unquestionably reached the Oregon coast. And there is ample evidence that as many as five ships may have wrecked ashore near Neahkahnie Mountain during this era of European exploration.