Dead Dunes Trail

The Dead Dunes (Nagliai) Nature Reserve on the Curonian Spit protects one of Europe's most dramatic landscapes — the Grey Dunes, where shifting sands have buried forests and swallowed entire fishing villages over the past few centuries. The boardwalk trail leads through this haunting terrain, past skeletal tree trunks emerging from sand, across bare dune fields, and to viewpoints overlooking the vast sand sea. The dunes are called 'dead' because they were stabilized by planting in the 19th century after centuries of devastating sand drift. The landscape tells a dramatic story of human-nature conflict — how deforestation led to sand catastrophe, and how determined reforestation efforts eventually tamed the dunes. Some areas remain active, and the interplay of living forest and encroaching sand creates otherworldly scenery.