Tiny Oregon community works to protect wildlife and water along Cape Meares — the ‘land that walks’

Cape Meares is an isolated ridge of long, empty beaches, pretty homes and deep, quiet woods that juts into the Pacific Ocean near Tillamook.

Residents here love how out-of-the-way their homes feel. It’s not on Route 101, and there are no gas stations or shops.

“And we’d like to keep it that way,” said Beverly Stein, the former chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, who retired in Cape Meares seven years ago.

Landslides, however, are common enough that the area is sometimes called the “land that walks.”

“If you see silt in Coleman Creek, you need to get out of there,” said one of Stein’s neighbors, Wendy Burroughs. “You needed to move fast.”

A few years ago, sculptor Devin Laurence Field was out for a walk when he noticed a creek with the yellow brown water that residents knew to worry about. “And I thought, that’s not normal,” he said.

In the distance, he could hear a diesel engine. So he headed upstream and found a crew and an excavator.

“They were about to start logging on the property, and they had permits and were doing so legally,” he said.

Field worried the logging could cause a landslide and that the silt could get into nearby Coleman Creek, the local water supply. So he made a few calls, and before long the Cape Meares Community Association held a meeting to talk about the work.

People wanted to know: Could the logging affect their water supply? Might it be delayed or stopped? Should they be worried about landslides?

In true neighborhood activist style, volunteers organized to learn more about land use law and hire lawyers with the aim of stopping the logging and protecting the land.

The initial news was good. The property owners, the Grimm family, were willing to sell. But they wanted $2 million, more than locals thought the 107 acres were worth.

Burroughs, whose background is in buying open space for the government in Arizona, thought it best to act quickly and make an offer, even if the initial sale price felt off.

“We just did it,” she said. “We signed it.”

So people in the tiny community of about 160 homes were on the hook for $2 million. But, Burroughs explained, signing an offer did not preclude negotiation. Neighbors quickly raised $25,000 and made the down payment.

What followed were a series of impressive financial maneuvers.

First, the neighbors hired an appraiser who told them the land was actually worth about $500,000 – a lot less than the sales price.

Then someone pointed out that the land included a dozen potential residential lots. Volunteers offered to do all the paperwork to get planning permission to subdivide the land, so the Grimm family could sell some of that property off separately. That brought the neighbors’ potential price down again.

Perhaps the biggest break came when someone suggested residents contact leaders at nearby Cape Meares National Wildlife Refuge. The federal government has deep pockets, the thinking went, and maybe it would buy the land to provide habitat for endangered marbled murrelets and northern spotted owls.

It turned out federal officials were interested, but only if the community would sell them an adjacent parcel too, because that would mean the refuge could remain in one contiguous piece.

Cape Meares community members had been given that parcel by Stimson Lumber several years earlier, because of its susceptibility to landslides. Locals weren’t doing anything with the land except using it as a place to hike. Their dream of surrounding themselves with protected land was in reach.

Working in Cape Meares’ favor is its isolation. To the west, there’s the ocean. Tillamook Bay sits to the east and north. And to the south there’s Cape Meares State Park and the wildlife refuge. So if the neighborhood could sell to the refuge, it would effectively be surrounded by protected land and water.

Stein, the former Multnomah commissioner, said once they had a workable deal, fundraising could start in earnest.

“I’ve raised a lot of money for campaigns. I know how you do it,” she said. “You just go and talk to people and ask them for money.”

Over a few months the community raised $270,000.

But the deal was growing complex, especially for a community of volunteers. For example, the timing was off: The buying of the Grimm land was scheduled to happen quickly, while selling the Stimson land to the federal government could take two to four years. And the money from the Stimson sale was needed to facilitate the purchase of the Grimm land.

So, the Conservation Fund, a nonprofit that helps communities make complex land deals aimed at protecting the environment, got involved.

The fund bought the Stimson land and the Grimm land, too. It’s now holding both parcels in the hope the federal government will eventually buy them for the refuge.

John Wros, a Conservation Fund spokesperson, said similar bridge buyer arrangements have helped protect land in Port Orford and Arch Cape.

“Other communities are seeing this example and are taking the reins to do it themselves,” Wros said.

In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially proposed expanding the refuge by acquiring both the Grimm and Stimson lands.

A few hurdles remain: The agency needs to prepare a comprehensive Land Protection Plan, hold public hearings, and get official approval from the U.S. Department of Interior.

Meanwhile, hopeful and industrious residents wait, fingers firmly crossed.