Vernonia Oregon

It is the July 4th holiday and we are camping in a city park. It is very nice here and super convenient. Until I started RVing, I would have never considered camping in a city park in Vernonia Oregon. It just depends on where you are.

Logging Town

Vernonia, Oregon is a logging town. There were two kinds of workers in this area, some cut trees and others milled trees. The scope of business was pretty limiting. Vernonia sits on the Nehalem River and that was associated with the filling mill pond, where trees were stored between cutting and milling. The water serves to soften the bark so that it can be removed more easily. The town also had a rail hub to transport the trees east. The last tree was cut right after I was born and the mill quit shipping lumber the following year.

The town has been without its major industry for nearly 60 years. Memories of the mill (sitting next to the pond, empty and roofless) are still scattered throughout the town. Even the train track lies unused so the track has been converted to a Rails-to-Trails bike path that travels mostly downhill more than twenty miles to the next town.   

The population is currently about 2000 but was higher in 1950. The Nehalem River had a major flood in 1996 that caused lots of damage and houses were raised as part of the repairs so that if it happens again, the damage won’t be so great.

Fireworks

The RV park is in the city park, fourth of July fireworks (also in the city park) started at 10 pm, it was a 100-yard walk from our campsite. Never before have we been so close as to can’t miss it. Then we wandered back to the RV.

So far we have 3220 RV miles and 130 days on the road in our RV. By far this is the longest and best vacation we have ever had.  Our longest day RV was 178 miles crossing sagebrush country in eastern Oregon. Our shortest move was 3.4 miles in Bluff Utah. Yesterday we went 12 miles from the state park to Vernonia.

Here is a link to the google map for the area.

Link to our 2018 Route.

Link to our route Coos Bay to Jim Creek  

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