Tenmile

The Tenmile Roadless Area covers 10,818 acres along the central Oregon coast in the Siuslaw National Forest, where the Coast Range meets the Pacific Ocean within the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The terrain rises from tidal flats and freshwater wetlands across deflation plains and stabilized sand sheets to the wooded slope of Drake Dune. Water defines the area: Tenmile Creek and its tributaries — Eel Creek, Charlotte Creek, Marie Creek, and Saunders Creek — feed a chain of coastal lakes that includes Clear Lake, Hall Lake, Shuttpelz Lake, Snag Lake, Butterfield Lake, and Beale Lake. Dune-impounded waters connect to estuarine reaches before draining to the Pacific, producing a mosaic of Pacific Coast Freshwater Marsh, Pacific Coast Tidal Marsh, and Pacific Northwest Shrub Swamp.

Forest communities respond to the moisture and salt gradients running inland from the beach. The outermost line is Pacific Northwest Coastal Headland Shrubland, where seashore lupine (Lupinus littoralis), beach glehnia (Glehnia littoralis), American dunegrass (Leymus mollis), and Hooker's willow (Salix hookeriana) bind shifting sand. Behind these, the Pacific Northwest Sitka Spruce Forest carries Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and western red-cedar (Thuja plicata) above an understory of salal (Gaultheria shallon), evergreen blueberry (Vaccinium ovatum), and Pacific rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum). On better-drained slopes, Pacific Northwest Moist Douglas-fir Forest dominates, with red alder (Alnus rubra) along seeps and bottoms and Oregon woodsorrel (Oxalis oregana) carpeting the floor. Wet hollows hold California pitcherplant (Darlingtonia californica), yellow skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus), and Methuselah's beard lichen (Usnea longissima) draped from spruce limbs.

The lakes and marshes support a coastal food web that runs from kingfisher to salmon. Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and rainbow trout or steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) spawn in Tenmile Creek, while harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus, vulnerable) work the lower estuary. American beaver (Castor canadensis) and great blue herons (Ardea herodias) hunt the freshwater shore; belted kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon) and ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) patrol from snag perches. In the closed canopy, Pacific marten (Martes caurina) and red tree vole (Arborimus longicaudus, near threatened) live among old conifers, while pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) and varied thrushes (Ixoreus naevius) move through the mid-story. On open dune and headland, snowy plovers (Anarhynchus nivosus, near threatened) scrape nests in bare sand, and rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus, near threatened) visit salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) blooms at the forest edge. Portions of this area fall within the potential range of several federally listed species; see the Conservation section for details.

A visitor crossing the area moves through abrupt ecological shifts. From the deflation plain at Eel Creek, the path passes through open dunegrass into shadow under spruce so dense that needles muffle the sound of surf. The trail breaks at the edge of one of the coastal lakes, where bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) and hooded merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) ride still water and Pacific tree frogs (Pseudacris regilla) call from sedge mats. Climbing the wooded flank of Drake Dune, ferns give way to salal and bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) as sand returns underfoot. From the crest, the listener hears the Pacific surf below and, in the other direction, the low motion of wind across freshwater marshes that drain quietly toward the sea.

The lands now comprising the Tenmile Roadless Area lie within the ancestral homelands of the miluk and hanis Coos, the quuiich Lower Umpqua, and the sha'yuushtl'a Siuslaw peoples, who have lived along the central and southern Oregon coast and inland along its rivers "since time immemorial" [2]. Their historic homelands extended from the forested slopes of the Coast Range to the rocky shoreline of the Pacific, a region of some 1.6 million acres [1]. Villages of cedar plank houses stood along the estuaries of the Siuslaw, Umpqua, and Coos rivers, and people moved seasonally to mountain hunting camps and along ridge trails for trade [1]. Generations of cultural burning kept ridges open: ethnographer John Peabody Harrington recorded testimony in 1942 that "the Indians used to keep all the brush of all the Siuslaw country burned down so that there was no retarding underbrush and deer were visible from afar" [7]. Among the villages erased before the United States formalized its rule was the Hanis Coos community at Tenmile Lakes itself, which a smallpox epidemic "had entirely wiped out" in 1824 [1].

In 1855, a treaty drafted to acquire the tribes' lands was signed by the three peoples but never ratified by the U.S. Senate [1]. Federal forces nonetheless rounded up the Coos and Lower Umpqua and, in 1860, marched them sixty miles north to a reservation at the Alsea subagency in Yachats, where many died of hunger and disease [1]. By the time a national forest was drawn over these coastal mountains, "Indigenous People had been displaced from their ancestral homelands for at least 50-70 years" [7].

Euro-American settlers had reached Coos Bay by the early 1850s, drawn by old-growth Douglas-fir, cedar, spruce, and hemlock and by California's lumber demand [9]. George Wasson hauled the first logs to his water-powered Coos Bay sawmill in 1853 [8], and Asa Mead Simpson followed with a steam-powered mill that "dominated production on Coos Bay for decades" [8]. In 1872 the Coos Bay Wagon Road connected the bay to Douglas County near Roseburg, knitting the timber district to the interior [4]. Around the turn of the century, coal mining, shipbuilding, and wood products together made the bay a regional economic center [4]. In 1908, lumberman C.A. Smith opened "a state-of-the-art sawmill on Coos Bay," shipping cut lumber south to a finishing mill northeast of San Francisco [8].

That same year, in response to widespread logging, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Siuslaw National Forest [6]; National Archives records confirm that portions of earlier reserves were "transferred…to Siuslaw National Forest, 1908" [5]. The forest is named for the Siuslaw River and the Siuslaw people [6]. The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, terminated by Congress in 1954, were restored to federal recognition on October 17, 1984 [2]. Tenmile, a 10,818-acre Inventoried Roadless Area within the Central Coast Ranger District in Coos and Douglas counties, is today protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Vital Resources Protected

• Cold-Water Stream and Coastal Lake Connectivity: Tenmile Creek, Eel Creek, Charlotte Creek, Marie Creek, and Saunders Creek carry water from forested upper slopes into Clear Lake, Hall Lake, Shuttpelz Lake, Snag Lake, Butterfield Lake, and Beale Lake before the system drains to the Pacific. Without roads, these channels retain unbroken aquatic connectivity from headwaters through dune-impounded lakes to estuary, the condition under which anadromous fish such as coho salmon and steelhead complete their life cycle and the lakes hold the stable thermal regime that resident fish and over-wintering waterfowl require.

• Old-Growth Sitka Spruce Structural Complexity: The Pacific Northwest Sitka Spruce and Moist Douglas-fir Forests on the area's interior support multi-layered canopies, large-diameter live trees, and standing snags. These structural elements provide nesting platforms for marbled murrelet, denning cavities used by Pacific marten, and the deep moss and lichen mats — including Methuselah's beard lichen and lettuce lichen — on which the red tree vole (near threatened) depends. The roadless condition keeps the canopy continuous and the disturbance interval long, which is what allows these features to develop and persist.

• Wetland-Upland Transition Zones: The area combines Pacific Coast Freshwater Marsh, Pacific Coast Tidal Marsh, and Pacific Northwest Shrub Swamp with directly adjoining Coastal Headland Shrubland and conifer forest. The roadless state preserves the hydrologic continuity that allows water to move laterally and seasonally between these habitats, supporting amphibian breeding by northwestern salamander and Pacific tree frog, waterbird use by bufflehead and hooded merganser, and the salt-to-freshwater gradient on which estuarine plants and invertebrates depend.

Potential Effects of Road Construction

• Sedimentation and Warming of Coastal Streams: Road cuts and ditches on the rain-soaked slopes above the Tenmile Lake system deliver fine sediment directly into streams, smothering the gravel beds that coho salmon and steelhead use for spawning and degrading the dune lakes' clarity. Removal of streamside Sitka spruce and red alder for road right-of-way reduces shading, raising water temperatures past the narrow range in which coastal salmonids and amphibians such as the southern torrent salamander can survive, and these aquatic effects accumulate downstream long after construction ends.

• Hydrological Disruption of Coastal Wetlands and Lakes: Roads built across deflation plains, marshes, and dune-impounded lake basins reroute and intercept the shallow groundwater flow that maintains freshwater marsh, tidal marsh, and shrub swamp. Fill placed in low-lying terrain blocks the lateral water movement that defines these ecosystems, and the resulting drying or impoundment alters vegetation, eliminates marsh-nesting habitat, and is exceptionally difficult to restore because the original hydrologic surface is destroyed during construction.

• Fragmentation, Edge Effects, and Invasive Corridors: A road bisecting the closed Sitka spruce canopy introduces wind, light, and temperature contrasts that extend hundreds of meters into the interior forest, reducing the habitat interior that marbled murrelet, Pacific marten, and the federally listed northern spotted owl require. Disturbed road shoulders and ditches act as dispersal corridors for the invasive plants already present in the broader landscape — Scotch broom, gorse, English holly, and French broom — which then spread into adjacent dune and forest communities and require sustained control to suppress.

The Tenmile Roadless Area lies inside the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area of the Siuslaw National Forest, where Pacific Northwest Sitka Spruce Forest, Moist Douglas-fir Forest, Coastal Headland Shrubland, freshwater marsh, and stabilized sand dunes occupy 10,818 acres of the central Oregon coast. The roadless portion of the area is reached by short walks from three principal trailheads — John Dellenback Dunes, Bluebill Lake, and Wild Mare — and supports hiking, horse riding, paddling, wildlife watching, hunting, and dispersed camping that depend on its undeveloped condition.

Hiking concentrates on a small set of non-motorized routes. The John Dellenback Dune Trail (#1339, 2.8 miles, imported compacted surface) and its short connector (#1339.1, 0.2 miles) cross the largest expanse of coastal dunes in the lower forty-eight, leaving the trees of the deflation forest for open sand and the Pacific shore. Around the freshwater dune lakes, the Hall Lake Loop (#1357, 0.7 miles), the Schuttpelz Lake Trail (#1357.1, 0.3 miles), and the Schuttspelz East Trail (#1357.2, 0.3 miles) circle through Sitka spruce shadow to lakeshore overlooks. The Umpqua Beach Vista (#1399) provides a short hiker spur to the surf, and the Riley Ranch Trail (#1389, 1.1 miles) is open to hikers and horse riders through forest and dune-meadow edge. The Wildmare Horse Trail (#4500, 0.8 miles) provides additional horse access from the Wild Mare Trailhead, which is paired with the Wild Mare Horse Camp.

Motorized recreation has its own designated trail network at the edges of the area. The Coast Guard-South OHV Trail (#1343, 8.6 miles) is the longest, with the Coast Guard Beach Access spur (#1343B) and Bull Run OHV Trail A (#1343A, 0.5 miles) connecting from it. The 430 OHV Trail (#1381, 4.7 miles) and its west connector (#1381A) cross stabilized dunes near Horsfall, while the Hauser OHV Trail (#1341, 1.9 miles) and Hauser Beach Loop (#1341A, 0.4 miles) extend from Hauser Beach. Shorter OHV routes — Saunders Lake (#1355, 0.8 miles) and 10 Mile (#1314, 0.9 miles) — provide access to lake-side staging areas. These trails operate under the Forest's OHV use designations and are physically separated from the hiker- and horse-only trails.

Bluebill Campground, Wild Mare Horse Camp, Horsfall Beach Campground, Spinreel Campground, and Eel Creek Campground provide the developed overnight base for the area. From these sites, paddlers reach the dune-impounded lakes — Clear, Hall, Shuttpelz, Snag, Butterfield, and Beale — where canoes and small boats move on quiet water without motor wakes, and anglers fish Tenmile Creek and its tributaries (Eel, Charlotte, Marie, Saunders) for coho salmon, Chinook salmon, and steelhead under Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations. Largemouth bass, bluegill, yellow perch, and black crappie are reported from the warmwater lakes.

Birding is the most documented wildlife activity in the surrounding landscape: twenty-three eBird hotspots fall within twenty kilometers, with North Spit–Old Weyco Settling Pond logging 279 species across more than 1,100 checklists. Within the Tenmile area itself, the closed Sitka spruce canopy carries pileated woodpecker, varied thrush, chestnut-backed chickadee, brown creeper, and Pacific wren, while open dune and headland support snowy plover, sanderling, dunlin, and northern shrike hunting from the shrub edge. The dune lakes draw bufflehead, hooded merganser, common loon, and Canada goose seasonally. Hunting for Roosevelt elk (wapiti), Columbian black-tailed deer (mule deer), American black bear, and waterfowl follows ODFW seasons and tag rules.

What ties the recreation here together is the absence of new roads through the interior. The hiker-only lake trails, dune walks from John Dellenback, and quiet paddling on the lake chain all depend on the unbroken forest and undisturbed lake basins; new road construction across the deflation plain or the spruce canopy would push motorized noise and dust into the interior trails and degrade the dune lakes that anchor the area's other uses.