Wilson River Trail Hike & Tillamook Forestry Center

On a quick outing along the Wilson River Trail, we paired a short hike with a visit to the Tillamook Forestry Center and were treated to unexpected wildlife sightings along the way.

This was a quick hike on the Wilson River Trail, starting at the Jones Creek trailhead. From the parking lot, the trail follows the road past the campground before heading into the forest. This section was built after a bridge washed out near the day-use area, so the reroute now wraps around the campground and crosses several small streams. I love trail bridges, and the ones in the Tillamook Forest almost always share the same design — tall side railings built to accommodate both hikers and mountain bikes.

Whenever I’m here, I love stopping at the large suspension bridge over the Wilson River at the Tillamook Forestry Center. It was open when we arrived, so we went inside to see what had changed since my last visit about ten years ago.

The Tillamook Forestry Center is an interpretive center with exhibits about the early days of logging in Oregon and the Tillamook Burn, a series of massive fires that swept through these forests from 1933 to 1951.

Checking out the gift shop is always fun, and this time a young ranger had a table set up to talk about salmon. She asked if we had seen any that day, then mentioned there were quite a few where the trail crosses Cedar Creek. I remembered the bridge—an oversized concrete span leftover from a former gravel road—so we planned to stop and see if we could spot them.

After spending a bit more time with the exhibits, we continued on the trail through mossy forest alongside the river.

When we reached Cedar Creek, a fisherman was standing on the bridge looking down into the water, and sure enough, several salmon were in the creek. We counted five or six, with several exhibiting spawning behavior—turning in the current and flicking gravel to prepare nests. They were also skimming the surface and splashing around quite a bit.

It was hard to pull ourselves away from watching them, but eventually we continued on since we were short on time and wanted to get in about five miles total for the day.

Just before the trail begins the ascent toward Wilson Falls, we turned around and headed back. We stopped at Cedar Creek again to watch the salmon a bit longer and eat our trail lunch before returning to the car.