Hunters Cove lies on the south side of Cape Sebastian, a prominent headland in Cape Sebastian State Scenic Corridor, about 20 miles (32 km) north-northwest of Brookings and 6.3 miles (10 km) south of Gold Beach, Oregon. The name reputedly derives from when sea otters were hunted from small boats and the cove offered shelter during storms along a coast with few safe harbors. Hunters Island is a small grass-topped islet at the cove entrance. Cape Sebastian is formed by a sequence of sedimentary rocks that developed during the Cretaceous (about 143 million to 66 million years ago). Capping the sequence is the Hunter Cove Formation, exposed in the eroding backshore of the cove, which consists of alternating layers of mudstone and sandstone with a combined thickness of 700–1,000 feet (213–305 m) overlying Cape Sebastian sandstone. Cape Sebastian sandstone is the principal bedrock forming the cape and consists of conglomerate and sandstone with a combined thickness of 800 feet (244 m). The Houstenaden Creek Formation is exposed on the north side of the cape and consists of turbidites with interbedded siltstone and mudstone, representing deposition in a deep-ocean basin where turbidity currents gave way to more pelagic conditions.

The coast between Cape Sebastian to the north and Crook Point to the south was the traditional territory of the Chetleshin people, Tututni Athabascans whose village of Chetlessenten stood at the former mouth of the Pistol River. Although Russian fur traders had been active in Alaska since 1743, the Northwest Coast fur trade began in 1788 when the sloop Lady Washington, commanded by Captain Robert Gray, traded with local people for sea otter skins just north of Yaquina Bay. The Columbia Rediviva, under Captain John Kendrick, carried the furs to Macao and Canton as part of the maritime fur trade. By 1790, an estimated 250,000 sea-otter pelts worth $50m had been taken from Pacific Northwest coastal waters. Gold was discovered in the Rogue River valley in 1852, and contact between the Chetleshins and an influx of miners and settlers intensified. Conflicts soon arose over territory and traditional food resources, sparking a series of skirmishes known as the Rogue River Wars. By 1856, Athabascan warriors had burned at least 60 settlers’ homes along the southern Oregon coast and killed the local Indian agent. In retaliation, Euro-American settlers raided and burned the village of Chetlessenten, which had already been abandoned. The surviving Chetleshins were eventually forced to march to the newly established Coast Reservation.

Sea otters once ranged from Baja California through Alaska and across to the waters off Siberia and northern Japan. Bones in middens excavated on the Oregon coast indicate that sea otters were once abundant there. Heavy hunting in the 18th and 19th centuries brought the species close to extinction; by the 1920s only small, isolated populations remained. The last known Oregon sea otter was shot in 1906 at Otter Rock, near Newport. In 1911 sea otters and northern fur seals received protection under the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention, signed by Britain, Russia, Japan, and the United States. The Marine Mammal Protection Act reinforced their protection in American waters in 1972. In 1967 sea otters were captured from Amchitka Island in the central Aleutians and relocated to release sites in Southeast Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. The first release, of 29 animals, occurred in 1970 at Cape Blanco—a century after the species had been hunted to extinction on the Oregon coast. An additional 64 sea otters were released in 1971 at Port Orford and Simpson Reef off Coos Bay; the reintroduction was unsuccessful, however, and the small population died out over the following nine years. Read more here and here. Explore more of Hunters Cove and Cape Sebastian here: