The Crown Zellerbach Trail, Oregon

The Crown Zellerbach Trail in early autumn. Image from the National Park Service's page.

The Crown Zellerbach Trail in Oregon runs from the Nehalem Divide — one of the lowest passes across Oregon's Coast Range — along the drainages of two local creeks, linking the towns of Scappoose and Vernonia through wetlands and forested hills along the Columbia River. Columbia County manages it, working with the Bureau of Land Management and local partners. In June 2023 it joined the National Trails System as a national recreation trail.

Close to the city

The trail is only 20 miles from downtown Portland and 25 miles from Portland International Airport, offering urban communities easy access to the outdoors and drawing visitors away from the region's more crowded places.

From trade route to logging road

• The gentle hills and easy terrain made the route a likely trade route between the Chinookan and Clatskanie peoples.
• By 1905 it had become the natural path for one of Oregon's first logging operations: the Chapman logging camp built the Southwest Railroad along today's trail to haul logs to the river, where they could be floated to the mills.
• In 1945 the railway was sold to the Crown Zellerbach Corporation and turned into a wide road for logging trucks.

The trail today

Today it is a 22-mile, mostly gravel forest path for hikers, bikers and horseback riders, through forest and farmland. It is divided into segments with many access points, so visitors can go any distance — suitable for experienced riders, casual hikers and children just learning to ride a bike.

Along the way, 23 interpretive kiosks and 60 signs explain the trail's story: its history from Indigenous peoples through the railroad era to apple orchards; the lava flows and glacial floods that shaped its rocks; and its plants and wildlife.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Trails System: "Crown Zellerbach Trail."
• The source's "Columbia Country, Oregon" is read here as Columbia County.