Whalen Island sits in Sand Lake, a bar-built estuary of about 1,250 acres (506 ha) in southern Tillamook County, roughly 13 miles (21 km) south-southwest of Tillamook and 5 miles (8 km) north of Pacific City, Oregon. Sand Creek rises at about 770 feet (235 m) in the Oregon Coast Range and flows about 8 miles (13 km) to the Pacific. With Jewell Creek, it drains most of the 10,880-acre (4,403 ha) watershed. Because estimated inflow averages only about 109 cubic feet per second (3 cu m/sec), the estuary formed behind a sand bar rather than in a drowned river valley, however, its mouth is fully exposed to ocean waves. The basin’s dunes supply most of the estuary’s sand and Whalen Island is stabilized dune and tidal marsh. The estuary divides into a dynamic marine subsystem of sand flats and channels to the west of Whalen Island and a more stable bay subsystem dominated by tidal marsh to the east. Channels have shifted dramatically over short periods. Dune vegetation has changed just as quickly. Aerial photographs of a deflation plain beside Sand Lake, taken in 1939 and 1961, show damp, largely bare sand giving way to introduced beachgrass, shrubs and pine seedlings. In 1977, the state’s Land Conservation and Development Commission designated Sand Lake a ‘natural’ estuary, a planning category that limits development and alteration.

The mouth of Sand Creek lay within the lands of the Nestucca, a group of the Tillamook people. Their homeland ran along the coast from Tillamook Head in the north to Cape Foulweather in the south and reached inland to the summit of the Coast Range. In August 1788, the American captain Robert Gray sailed the sloop Lady Washington into Tillamook Bay, the first recorded American visit to the bay. The Tillamook numbered about 2,200 when Lewis and Clark estimated them in 1805 and 1806. Smallpox epidemics in 1824 and 1829 caused heavy losses, and after Oregon Trail settlers arrived in 1841, conflicts over land and resources brought further deaths. By 1845, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes estimated about 400 Tillamook remained. In 1854 and 1855, the superintendent of Indian Affairs, Joel Palmer, negotiated nine of fifteen treaties with western Oregon tribes. The treaties promised a permanent reservation in exchange for land cessions. The Coast Reservation, created in 1855, was reduced by about three-quarters in 1865 and 1875, and survivors were moved to the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations. Later, the estuary’s slough was channelized, dikes and a bridge to Whalen Island were built, and drainage channels were cut through the northern marshes to prevent flooding and provide pasture.

Whalen Island is now part of the Clay Myers State Natural Area at Whalen Island, which joined the Oregon State Parks system in 2000 to protect an estuary critical to adult salmon migrating upstream to spawn and to smolts leaving freshwater for the ocean. The site was acquired through a partnership of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Park Service, the Tillamook County Board of Commissioners, and the Trust for Public Land. The park is named for Clay Myers, Oregon’s secretary of state from 1967 to 1977 and state treasurer from 1977 to 1984, a longtime advocate for conservation. In 2014, Ecotrust bought 357 acres (144 ha) of tidal marsh, mudflats, dunes, forested wetlands and uplands at the south end of the estuary. The state later acquired the land using Oregon Lottery funds and a National Coastal Wetlands Conservation grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That land is now the Sitka Sedge State Natural Area. About 244 of its 357 acres (99 of 145 ha) lie west of Sandlake Road, fronting the ocean and estuary. Visitors can walk a 1.5-mile (2.4-km) loop trail around Whalen Island, and the county campground at the entrance offers basic campsites and a boat launch. Parking at the trailhead was free as of 2021. Read more here and here. Explore more of Whalen Island and Sand Lake here: