Port Orford Heads

Easy 1.2-mile loop 200 feet elevation gain

Left: Battle Rock.

Below right: The barracks museum.

Below left: Nellies Cove.

Port Orford’s rugged shore claimed so many lives in shipwrecks that the Coast Guard built a lifeboat station on a headland here in 1934. Whenever lookouts at the station’s tower reported a ship in danger, guardsmen would tumble out of their barracks, race down a 504-step staircase to Nellies Cove, and launch a 36-foot self-righting lifeboat. The station closed in 1970, but the barracks now houses a museum and short trails tour the headland’s meadows.