• Rating: Moderate
  • Activity: Hike
  • Distance: 1.3 miles round trip
  • Time:

This fifty-one-acre park delivers on its name and makes a worthy wine-country diversion. At the heart of the loop sit thirty-five enormous Douglas firs and western hemlocks, measuring about twenty feet around at the base of their trunks. Most of these behemoths, which stand guard over an impressive array of wild ginger and red huckleberry, are more than four hundred years old. Make sure to pay your respects to Big Guy, the preserve’s thirty-five-foot wide, two-hundred-foot-tall fir that fell victim to a windstorm in 1981. (Note: The gates typically are open only on weekends during daylight hours. Call the Bureau of Land Management, 503-375-5646, ahead of time to ensure you can get in.)

ROUND TRIP: 1.3 miles

NEAREST TOWN: Falls City

DISTANCE FROM DOWNTOWN: 93 miles

PACK: Hiking Oregon; USGS Warnicke Creek map