This photo of submerged stumps along the Columbia River is attributed to Sarah Hall Ladd and was taken around 1902.

A few weeks ago, I wrote in this column about some of the seismic events that have affected coastal areas of the Northwest, including a major earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone fault line that happened on Jan. 26, 1700.

Researchers know that date in part because of places like the Copalis Ghost Forest, where stumps remaining from what were once tall cedar and spruce forests along the Washington coast hold time capsules in the form of ring patterns.

Submerged places along the Oregon Coast, like the Neskowin Ghost Forest, tell a similar story.

There, Sitka spruce stumps as much as 2,000 years old re-emerged from the sand after a series of winter storms in the late 1990s. It’s estimated the trees once stood between 150 and 200 feet tall, a coastal rainforest now best seen at low tide.

Lewis and Clark observed a similar submerged forest in the Columbia River. In a journal entry from Oct. 30, 1805, Capt. William Clark noted stumps “at some distance” from the riverbank near present-day Cascade Locks.

On April 14, 1806, as the expedition returned upriver, Capt. Meriwether Lewis wrote of “the trunks of many large pine trees s(t)anding erect as they grew at present in 30 feet water.”

Unlike ghost forests on the Atlantic Coast, which are often the result of sea level rise, scientists have supposed that these trees were buried after an abrupt drop, or otherwise covered by landslides or tsunami debris.

The barnacle and mussel-covered stumps of Neskowin, and others, are a look into a past landscape, and a fascinating reminder of a coastline that’s ever-changing.