Among the many communities, natural landscapes, and hiking trails that were set ablaze in the historic 2020 Labor Day Wildfires, the Beachie Creek fire swept across Shellburg Falls Recreation Area in the Santiam State Forest southeast of Salem. Once the smoke cleared, TKO was called upon to help!
Like its neighbor Silver Falls State Park (but much smaller), Shellburg Falls is known for the same —one 100 feet tall and the other 40 feet— and a modest network of trails that wound through deep forest and over footbridges. Thanks to untold hours of trail restoration (okay, yes we keep track of our volunteer hours) and sophisticated bridge construction by Trailkeepers of Oregon volunteers, the park is again welcoming visitors to this recovering fire-scarred landscape.
In the first year after the fire, the Oregon Department of Forestry began removing hazard trees, and TKO was approached by Northwest Youth Corps to assign TKO-managed interns to scout the conditions. A three-person team of interns reported the severity of damage across 24+ miles of trails in the Santiam State Forest that is divided into several large blocks of land and numerous smaller parcels. The TKO interns addressed immediate safety concerns so that volunteers could follow them up and do the painstaking trail restoration necessary to welcome the public back again.
Volunteers cleared the slurry of rock and rubble and they battled brushy trail corridors at the closed site, “but the vegetation would just immediately grow back because there were no hiking boots on the ground” to help keep the trails brush-free, said Nelson Kline, a Salem-area volunteer crew leader with TKO. Nelson watched with disappointment as the cycle repeated itself over a couple of years, the open canopy accelerated the carpet of vegetation and covered TKO’s progress. With critical resource protection and necessary water crossings needing new footbridges to be built, TKO brought new energy to the site’s restoration.
By fall 2023 the Oregon Department of Forestry recognized that without new footbridges, the park and its trail system couldn’t be reopened. ODF had bought two “bridge kits”: stacks of glulam stringers and other materials. But the two 30-foot span bridges and their approaches still needed to be designed and built.
So TKO Executive Director Steve Kruger enlisted Tom Brauner, a newly minted volunteer TKO crew leader and retired mechanical engineer, to lead the bridge project. The initial challenge was simply finding the first bridge site: with so much brush—salmonberry brambles 8 feet tall—“we couldn’t even tell if there was a creek in there,” Tom said. He custom-welded a tripod to move materials around with a highline. At least the first bridge was accessible by vehicles. “We weren’t so lucky on the second one,” he said: it was deep in a ravine, so stringers and even gravel had to be lowered by cable. Despite those challenges, Tom said, “The second one went a lot faster because we already had a trained crew.” Both bridges began with construction of gabions—wire-enclosed containers of rock—for the approaches at either end. In addition to bridge work, TKO volunteers removed fallen trees, brushed trails, installed drainage features, built new trail and recontoured eroding tread at more than two dozen trail parties, led in part by Tom, Nelson, and Art Mills, another Salem-area TKO crew leader. They even took on the significant task of rebuilding the trailhead parking area.
On May 17, 2024, three and a half years after the fire, Shellburg Falls reopened to the public. By then TKO volunteers had put in 875 hours to make the site ready for recreation—not including hundreds more hours Tom, Nelson, and Art have volunteered (and continue to volunteer) on their own.
If you remember Shellburg Falls from before the fire, you’ll find some things changed. There is no longer a campground. Hikers are no longer allowed to walk behind Shellburg Falls. Access has also changed; the route to the trailhead now follows a longer, rougher road. See details on TKO’s OregonHikers.org Field Guide page.