Visit the Mountains Around The Old Wagon Road

The Mountains of the Old Wagon Road. [Ask for #274.286.]

One of the delights of the Coast Range is the way the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) puts paved roads all through the mountains. These paved roads tend to head up to the mountain ridges and stay there for mile after mile. This is presumably due to the way clearcuts are harvested here: trees are moved from the bottom upwards to the ridge via overhead cables. All of these roads have good surfaces and can be driven with any kind of passenger car in the summer, although some can be steep or have sharp drop-offs to one side. This section will show you the way.

These roads form a 67.5 mile loop around the Old Wagon Road, following the East Fork Coquille River's watershed to form a giant oval. The Wagon Road runs through the middle of this loop, providing extremely scenic access to both ends. This scenic mountain drive stays between 2200 feet and 2800 feet in elevation for most of length, finally reaching 3000 feet on its southern stretch (known as Weaver Road). That's quite a climb; at its start (at Dora) it's only 180 feet aboove sea level. There are a number of interesting paved side roads as well, and this section will include a few of the best.

You will see a lot of clearcuts here, and there are wide views from the roads that run along the top of them. Most if not all of of these clearcuts are on private lands; environmental lawsuits largely prevent log harvesting on BLM tracts. The reason the BLM roads cut through so much private land is because the BLM only owns every other square mile of land, a checkerboard of public and private holdings. The BLM lands in this checkerboard were originally deeded over to the builders of The Old Wagon Road in 1866, but the owners were so corrupt in their land dealings that the feds took them back fifty years later in an action Oregonians call "The Revestment".

The pages in this section map and describe every paved BLM road that goes somewhere worthwhile and can be driven by an ordinary car. While some can be steep, none suffer from potholes, collapsed sides, or poor maintenance. There are two pages in this section. The first describes a 67.5 mile scenic drive circling the Old Wagon Road, and the second describes some outstanding side roads.

NEXT: Follow the Wagon Road's Scenic Mountain Drive ... 

For a highly detailed pdf map click here.

Map of the paved roads that surround the Old Coos Bay Wagon Road, with the scenic loop marked. [Ask for #990.133.]