9 Towns on the Pacific Coast With the Finest Downtown Areas

The iron cannon that gave Cannon Beach, Oregon, its title washed ashore in 1846 from the wreck of the U.S. Navy schooner USS Shark, misplaced within the Columbia River bar. The cannon continues to be on the coast. It sits behind glass within the city’s historical past middle, the way in which an object in a small museum sits when everybody is aware of the story. Most of those 9 Pacific downtowns work the identical manner. Each city retains one piece of unique financial anchor: a fur-trading publish, a lighthouse, a 235-foot basalt sea stack, a logging dock, a railway terminus that by no means really bought constructed. Each city has organized itself round that one piece because the Nineteenth century.

Florence, Oregon

Florence sits on the mouth of the Siuslaw River on the central Oregon coast. Historic Old Town runs three blocks alongside the riverfront, with the industrial district courting to 1893 and most of its restoration accomplished within the Nineteen Eighties after a long time of post-timber decline. The 1936 Siuslaw River Bridge. a Conde McCullough Art Deco design with bascule carry sections. frames each downtown view south. Look on the bridge. Then have a look at it once more. McCullough designed 13 of those alongside the Oregon coast within the Nineteen Thirties, and they’re the unsung sculpture gardens of US freeway engineering.

The Waterfront Depot, within the relocated 1913 Mapleton prepare depot, has been a vacation spot dinner spot for crab truffles and Pacific Northwest seafood since 1998. Bridgewater Fish House and Zebra Bar serves halibut and Dungeness from a former 1907 ironmongery shop. The Siuslaw Pioneer Museum, within the 1905 schoolhouse on Maple Street, runs pioneer-era artifacts and displays on the Coos and Siuslaw tribes. Twelve miles north on Highway 101, Sea Lion Caves runs an elevator down into an lively Steller sea lion rookery within the largest sea cave within the United States. You hear them earlier than you see them. The sound carries up by means of the rock, and the scent carries up too. which is the half the brochures miss.

Cambria, California

Cambria sits on California’s central coast between San Simeon and Morro Bay, 35 miles north of San Luis Obispo. Founded in 1866 as Slabtown, a logging middle for Monterey pine shipped out by means of a now-vanished pier at San Simeon. the unique wooden went to construct half of late-Nineteenth-century San Francisco, which is why so little of Monterey pine survives in California at present. The downtown splits into West Village and East Village, with West Village alongside Main Street and East Village a half-mile inland. Vault Gallery, Artifacts Gallery, and Mission Gallery anchor the native artwork scene.

The Cambria Historical Museum operates contained in the 1874 Guthrie-Bianchini House, one of many oldest surviving residences on the town. Moonstone Beach on the western fringe of city is known as for the small white moonstones nonetheless discovered alongside its tide line. decide one up at low tide, maintain it as much as the sunshine, and watch it glow blue-white. The paved boardwalk over the bluffs runs the size of the seashore. Sunset is the time. Just north, the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery hosts as much as 17,000 northern elephant seals at peak season in January and February, with a free viewing space run by Friends of the Elephant Seal. Adult males. Up to five,000 kilos. They won’t care that you just exist, and the bulls will battle one another on the sand thirty toes from the place you are standing, and you shouldn’t get any nearer. Hearst Castle, eight miles north in San Simeon, stays the world’s greatest single customer draw and now operates as a California state historic park.

Gig Harbor, Washington

Gig Harbor sits throughout the Tacoma Narrows from Tacoma, with the downtown wrapped round a small horseshoe-shaped harbor that gave the city its title. Settled by Croatian and Scandinavian fishermen within the 1860s and 1870s, the type of working immigration story that does not get instructed as a result of no person bought well-known. The city constructed its industrial economic system on industrial salmon fishing, which nonetheless operates from this harbor at present.

The Harborview Drive promenade runs the complete size of the downtown waterfront. The Harbor History Museum on Harborview Drive runs the restored 1947 Shenandoah purse seiner. precise 100-foot fishing boat, displayed below cowl, climb-aboard-the-deck welcome. and displays in town’s Croatian and Native heritage. Skansie Brothers Park, named for 4 immigrant Croatian fishermen who constructed their household fishing fleet from this spot, runs the general public dock and the unique Skansie household internet shed. The Maritime Pier and floating moorage preserve the downtown harbor working relatively than decorative. boats coming and going, not docked for show. Kopachuck State Park, quarter-hour west, runs a Puget Sound seashore with views throughout to Cutts Island and the Olympics on clear days. The Olympic Range on a transparent day is the view that provides the Pacific Northwest its popularity.

Long Beach, Washington

Long Beach sits on the Long Beach Peninsula, a 28-mile sand spit between Willapa Bay and the Pacific. The city runs about 1,400 residents and serves because the industrial hub for the peninsula. The seashore will get promoted as “the World’s Longest Beach,” which a number of different locations dispute. What is verifiable: the 28-mile stretch is the longest drivable seashore within the United States and is legally categorised as a state freeway. You can actually drive on it. People do. There are velocity limits. There are mile markers. There is a street that may be a seashore.

The city’s commissioned “World’s Largest Frying Pan,” a 14-foot-long fiberglass reproduction of the 1941 unique, hangs on the nook of Pacific Avenue and fifth Street. No longer the world’s largest. Still the oldest such declare and the one one to have really cooked meals. having fried a 200-pound clam fritter on the 1941 Razor Clam Festival. Marsh’s Free Museum throughout the road runs Jake the Alligator Man, a small however persistent assortment of oddities that has drawn guests since 1921. Jake is an actual mummified gator head sewn to the physique of a small monkey. Make of that what you’ll. The Cranberry Museum and the encircling working cranberry bogs replicate the world’s standing as one of many main cranberry-growing areas within the Pacific Northwest. The Discovery Trail runs 8.4 miles of paved path alongside the dune line connecting Ilwaco and Long Beach.

Bandon, Oregon

Bandon sits on the mouth of the Coquille River on the southern Oregon coast and rebuilt itself after a 1936 wildfire worn out virtually your entire city in a single afternoon. Imagine that for a second. Old Town Bandon now occupies the restored waterfront space, with the 1894 industrial buildings changed by 1936-era development and trendy infill. The boardwalk alongside the Coquille runs previous industrial fishing boats that also work the river.

The Coquille River Lighthouse, on the north spit of the river entrance, dates to 1896 and now operates as a part of Bullards Beach State Park. Face Rock Scenic Viewpoint on the south finish of city overlooks the offshore sea stack named for a Coquille legend a few younger girl turned to stone by an evil spirit. Stand on the bluff at low tide. The face is unmistakable. The stack stares straight north out to sea and when you see her, you can’t un-see her. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, 4 miles north, has constructed a world popularity since 2001 for links-style coastal golf and now ranks among the many high golf locations within the United States. The Bandon Historical Society Museum runs displays on the cranberry business, the 1936 hearth, and the Coquille Indian tribe. small museum, massive tales.

Astoria, Oregon

Astoria, based in 1811 by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company, is the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies. Older than St. Louis on the western aspect, and the downtown nonetheless sits on a steep slope above the Columbia River that calls for completely different gears in numerous automobiles. Commercial Street is the backbone, with the 1925 Liberty Theatre because the anchor efficiency venue. The Riverwalk runs 5 miles alongside the Columbia waterfront. A classic 1913 trolley operates seasonally alongside it, and sure you’ll be able to flag it down like a bus.

The Columbia River Maritime Museum on the waterfront runs displays on the Columbia Bar (essentially the most harmful river bar on this planet, with over 2,000 ships wrecked since data started. they name it the Graveyard of the Pacific and they don’t seem to be exaggerating), the lightship Columbia (anchored alongside as a part of the museum), and the river’s industrial fishing and cannery historical past. The Astoria Column atop Coxcomb Hill is a 125-foot strengthened concrete tower inbuilt 1926, with a spiral sgraffito frieze depicting Pacific Northwest historical past. Climb the 164 inside steps. Buy a balsa-wood glider on the reward store and throw it from the remark deck. Everyone does. Children, adults, dignified individuals who declare they would not. They all throw the glider. The 1886 Flavel House, a Queen Anne Victorian constructed by Columbia River Bar pilot Captain George Flavel, anchors the higher finish of the downtown historic district. Fort Stevens State Park 10 miles west preserves a Civil War-era coastal protection fort and the wreck of the Peter Iredale rusting on the seashore since 1906. a four-masted barque that ran aground in fog and by no means got here off.

Claremont, California

Claremont sits 35 miles east of Los Angeles on the southern foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. Founded in 1887 as a railroad cease. Became house to the Claremont Colleges consortium that began with Pomona College the identical 12 months, then added six extra schools over the following century into what’s now one of many nation’s strongest small-college consortiums. The downtown, domestically known as Claremont Village, runs eight tree-lined blocks adjoining to the Pomona College campus.

The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, within the restored Nineteen Thirties Santa Fe depot, runs rotating displays on California artists. The Folk Music Center, a working musical instrument store and museum based in 1958 by the grandparents of musician Ben Harper, sells and repairs folks devices from all over the world. Ben Harper grew up right here. Photos on the partitions. His grandmother Dorothy Chase nonetheless seems within the store. The Claremont Packing House, a 1922 citrus packing facility transformed to a mixed-use complicated, holds unbiased eating places, the Last Name Brewing tasting room, and a public market. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, 86 acres on the north finish of city, runs the most important assortment of California native vegetation on this planet: over 2,000 species, together with coastal redwoods you did not suppose grew in Southern California. Mount Baldy, the very best peak of the San Gabriels at 10,069 toes, sits 20 miles north and provides the visible backdrop from wherever within the Village.

Port Townsend, Washington

Port Townsend sits on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula and is one in every of solely three Victorian seaports on the National Register of Historic Places. The others are Cape May, New Jersey, and San Francisco. The industrial district was constructed largely between 1880 and 1893 in anticipation of turning into the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The terminus by no means got here. The panic of 1893 froze the growth in a single day, the railroad picked Tacoma, and the half-finished Victorian downtown sat preserved by lack of cash for the remainder of the twentieth century. Bad luck grew to become preservation. The downtown survives intact as a result of no person may afford to modernize it.

The 1891 Hastings Building, a Romanesque Revival industrial block, anchors the Water Street view. The 143-foot 1892 Jefferson County Courthouse clock tower stays the tallest courthouse tower in Washington state. The Rothschild House, an 1868 body residence on a bluff above the downtown, runs as a state park and preserves the pre-Victorian frame-construction fashion. Fort Worden State Park, two miles north on Point Wilson, preserves the 1900s coast artillery installations and runs the Point Wilson Lighthouse, a Coast Artillery Museum, and the venue the place most of An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) was filmed. Stand on the parade floor at Worden. You will acknowledge it. Richard Gere ran throughout it. The Wooden Boat Festival every September brings a whole lot of vessels to Point Hudson Marina. the most important picket boat competition in North America, and a city packed shoulder to shoulder with individuals who can speak about caulking for 90 minutes.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Cannon Beach sits on the northern Oregon coast 80 miles west of Portland. The downtown runs alongside Hemlock Street with cedar-shingle buildings, artwork galleries, and eating places concentrated in roughly six walkable blocks. The city was named for an iron cannon that washed ashore from the wrecked U.S. Navy schooner USS Shark in 1846. The cannon is on show within the city’s historical past middle. Not a metaphorical cannon. An precise one, recovered from the seashore, on show behind glass.

The defining landmark is Haystack Rock, a 235-foot basalt sea stack rising immediately from the seashore about 90 toes off the downtown. The base is a delegated Marine Garden and a part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, with tide swimming pools containing ochre sea stars, sea anemones, and hermit crabs, and a tufted puffin nesting colony lively April by means of July. Walk out at low tide. The swimming pools are alive. The Cannon Beach History Center and Museum runs displays on the Shark wreck and the city’s historical past as an early Oregon Coast resort. The Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest, working since 1964, is the oldest steady sandcastle competitors on the West Coast. and the sculptures should not what you bear in mind from the seashore as a baby. They are structure. Ecola State Park instantly north runs the path to the deserted Tillamook Rock Lighthouse viewpoint. Tillamook Rock Lighthouse stands a mile offshore, decommissioned since 1957, now a non-public columbarium the place ashes are saved. The keepers who labored it known as it Terrible Tilly. Look at it on a winter day. You will perceive why.

What These Nine Downtowns Share

Each rests on a particular unique financial anchor that both survived or bought preserved. Florence and Bandon work as a result of river-mouth fishing economies left walkable port districts behind. Astoria and Port Townsend saved their industrial cores intact as a result of boom-era ambition fell by means of earlier than it might be paved over. Cambria and Cannon Beach work as a result of the encircling state parks set arduous limits on progress. Gig Harbor and Long Beach preserve their working identities as a result of the harbor and the seashore are nonetheless working. Claremont anchors itself to its faculty consortium and a citrus-packing previous. None of the 9 is interchangeable with any of the others.