Oregon Dunes

In 1957 Frank Herbert, then a newspaperman with one novel published, chartered a plane to Florence to write a magazine article about how the U.S. Department of Agriculture was stopping the dunes. Sand blowing inland off this coast had been burying roads, fields and buildings, and the answer the government had found was European beachgrass, planted to anchor the sand and followed by shrubs and trees. Herbert's working title was They Stopped the Moving Sands. He never finished it. The dunes fascinated him, he said later, and the research carried him to deserts, to ecology and finally to a planet made of sand; Dune was published in 1965.

The grass worked almost too well. Its deep runners trap sand blowing off the beach and build a ridge along the shore that starves the open dunes behind it of fresh sand, while shrubs and forest close in, and much of the open sand that existed when the planting began has since grown over. In 2016 local governments, tribes, federal agencies and conservation groups formed the Oregon Dunes Restoration Collaborative to pull out the beachgrass and keep the open dunes open, reversing the project Herbert came to admire.

The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area runs between Florence and Coos Bay. At the Oregon Dunes Overlook on US-101 a short walk leads to viewing platforms above the sand, and a trail continues across the dunes to the beach. Parts of the recreation area are open to off-highway vehicles and parts are kept for people on foot, so check which you are in before you set out.