By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS — For pre-pandemic newcomers to Yachats, the small city always seemed to kick up a big tide of social and civic affairs. There were art and crafts fairs, pie socials, concerts, solstice celebrations, a major music festival, civic and trails projects, crab and pancake feeds and even meetings.
All in person, face-to-face.
Those events gave new arrivals and their neighbors opportunities to meet, mingle and build community — until the coronavirus pandemic slapped a “Cancelled” stamp on most of it.
As the virus appears to be loosening its grip, there are emerging signs of the city coming back to life.
“People are starving for ways to meet people,” says Shelly Shrock, an active volunteer who has lived in Yachats with her husband, Dean, for 10 years. This summer she began organizing casual beach bonfires as a way to help newcomers ease in to their new locale.
“We used to have what we called a ‘village mixer’ in the Commons so new people could met and greet,” she said. “When the pandemic hit, that stopped.”
In July, Schrock posted a notice on the Yachats Village Residents Facebook page inviting anyone and everyone to a group bonfire on the south side of the Yachats bay. “… the response has been wonderful,” she says.
The Shrocks invited residents new and not so new to bring chairs, some firewood and supplies for s’mores to the beach just below the stairs off Yachats Ocean Road. The first gathering drew 12 people, the last one attracted 25, and the next — at 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 28, — is expected to draw even more.
“We make a circle, everybody introduces themselves, tells how they ended up in Yachats (there’s always a story), and it’s all very friendly,” Schrock says.
It was especially poignant at the last bonfire to encounter a young woman and her son from Ukraine. The husband/father travels back and forth to the war-torn nation to help the resistance effort.
“The little boy had never heard of a s’more,” Shrock said of the marshmallow campfire treat, “so we got him fixed up.”
What most surprises the newcomers is “how welcoming people are here,” says Shrock, a retired massage therapist. “The newer residents have no idea how active Yachats used to be.”
Newcomers not “Yachats-ized”
That lack of knowledge can be affecting a growing influx of residents. A record 1,010 people were Yachatians in 2021. And according to the U.S. Census, the city’s population grew by 44 percent between 2010 and 2020 — from 690 to 994 people.
That’s a large population chunk that may settle in with little to no idea of how and where to put down their roots.
One local with a long history in the area has a special perspective on the matter.
“We’ve had a lot of new people moving in, and they’re not being ‘Yachats-ized’,” says Stephen Farish, who has been music director of the Yachats Celtic Music Festival since 2017. A Waldport resident since 1984, Farish has “been watching Yachats for 45 years” since he moved to Lincoln County in 1977. A building contractor, Farish is on the board of directors of Polly Plumb Productions, the non-profit that sponsors the popular Celtic festival and several other artistic and cultural events in Yachats.
“Yachats was a hub of activity — especially musical shows — for years until the pandemic,” Farish says. He perceives some newcomers as “kind of trying to re-invent Yachats, because they think there’s nothing else there.”
There’s more and more “there” here, as evidenced by examples like these:
- A bluegrass concert at the Commons this month pulled a small but wildly enthusiastic crowd. A trio from Brooklyn, N.Y. brought in by Polly Plumb was a big hit — and is motivating the non-profit to schedule more concerts in the near future.
- The Yachats Big Band dance concerts have resumed at The Commons, playing on the first Thursdays of each month.
- The Yachats Trails Team, an all-volunteer group that grooms and maintains many of the city’s public walking trails, is enjoying a boom in membership. The core group of a dozen or so kept working under health protocols during the pandemic, but their ranks have swelled to more than double that the past few work sessions.
- The Yachats Celtic Festival, silenced for two years, is scheduled to rollick back in November with a full slate of top musicians, workshops and vendors.
- The popular Sunday Yachats Farmers Market re-opened this year with an easing of some pandemic restrictions, and more vendors than in the past two years.
- The Yachats Arts Guild, a collective for local artists, tried online shows and sales the past two years with middling results. An in-person show over the July 4 weekend in the Commons was a major success, and promoting another live show during the Labor Day weekend.
“Covid hasn’t gone away”
Another long-time resident, Joanne Kittel, has been a major advocate for trails and Native American heritage in Yachats. She’s one of the de facto leaders of the Yachats Trails Team, and is delighted to report a boost in membership from about 12 to almost 30.
Working with the volunteer trails group is “ a great way to socialize, meet new people and make a difference in the community,” she says. However, she observes, “Covid hasn’t gone away; a lot of people are still getting sick. Still, people are getting out in the community much more” than during the height of the pandemic.
For her part, Shrock calls joining the trails group “the best thing we ever did” when she and her husband moved to Yachats almost 10 years ago.
“There’s a lot of younger people coming in; I feel there’ll be people to carry on once us older folks are gone.”
Shrock also volunteers with the city to organize the weeders and rakers who in turn volunteer to maintain the flower beds along U.S. Highway 101 through downtown.
“I have about six new people who have ‘adopted’ some beds,” she says. “They’re all new; there’s a lot of gardeners out there.” She urged anyone interested in either the flower beds or the bonfires to contact her through the Yachats Village Residents Facebook page.
As the area eases back to some form of normalcy, it’s also demonstrating more of the charm and quirkiness that draws many people to Yachats.
“When people come into Yachats, they get a feeling — one that’s passed on from residents to newcomers,” says Farish. “I think we need it back.”
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com