Another highlight is the mass amount of ancient tree stumps - nicknamed the "ghost forest." This is a visually impressive oddity is almost a rare sight in Neskowin, but you may not know just how spectacular it is unless you know what it is you're looking at.
They look somewhat like old, ragged pilings leftover from something manmade - but they are, in fact, stumps of a forest some 2,000 years ago or so. As many as 100 are sometimes visible in various shapes and sizes. It's theorized that around 2,000 years ago a massive, cataclysmic earthquake abruptly dropped this forest possibly more than 25 feet. Then, somehow, they were preserved by sand and mud, rather then being destroyed and scattered, as natural erosion might have done.
The theory is that either a tsunami brought the sand in or the earthquake rattled up so much soil and sand it covered the forest. The other dynamic here is that these were obviously lopped off by some enormous force - which scientists believe is a tsunami either immediately after the initial event, or one such as the wave that wiped out these shores in 1700.
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