As you enter Vernonia Springs you will drive over Beaver Creek which is home to rainbow trout and spawning salmon in the fall. As you continue up the driveway towards the spring-fed pond, you will cross over the Banks-Vernonia State Trail, which dissects the property.

The bike trail was once a railroad line owned by the United Railway Co. and used for transporting douglas fir logs and lumber from Vernonia to the Willamette Valley. In 1895 the Vernonia School District leased a portion of the property and built a schoolhouse that has since been preserved. If you travel North on Nehalem Hwy S. toward Vernonia, you will see the schoolhouse located on the right approximately one mile.

Steam locomotives began stopping on the property to fill their boilers in the spring of 1924. In the 1980’s, United Railway Co. sold the railway line to the State of Oregon Parks and Recreation Dept. in order to convert the line to a paved “rails to trails” bicycle-equestrian trail that runs 21 miles from Banks to Vernonia. When the property was purchased in 2013 it had been a u-catch trout farm for nearly 70 years.  In 2015, Vernonia Springs received its Private Park designation, and since then has hosted over 200 weddings and other private events.