10 Best Small Towns on the Pacific Coast to Visit

At the mouth of the Columbia River, Astoria, Oregon, looks out on a stretch of water that wrecked so many ships it became known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. It is one of many small towns strung along the Pacific Coast where the ocean sets the rhythm, whether the draw is sea-glass beaches, redwood railroads, or Victorian seaports. Each one pairs a walkable downtown with a working harbor and easy beach access. Here are ten of the best small towns to visit on the Pacific Coast.

Laguna Beach, California

Laguna Beach built its identity on art and coastline. The town leads Southern California's gallery scene with the Laguna Art Museum and a summer Pageant of the Masters that stages live recreations of famous paintings. Down at the shore, Crystal Cove State Park has tide pools and a long sandy beach, while the ridgeline trails above town, including the Top of the World viewpoint, look out over the Pacific. Newport Beach lies just up the coast and Dana Point just down it, though the coves in between are the reason to stop.

Astoria, Oregon

Astoria packs its history onto the Columbia River waterfront. The Columbia River Maritime Museum traces the region's many shipwrecks and the Coast Guard crews who work the Columbia bar, one of the most dangerous river entrances anywhere. A riverfront trolley travels the length of the working waterfront to Pier 39, a former cannery that now houses a cafe and a sea-lion-watching deck. For the long view, the Astoria Column rises on Coxcomb Hill, its spiral mural climbing about 125 feet, with the river and the Pacific spread out below.

Port Townsend, Washington

Port Townsend boomed in the 1880s as a customs port that expected to become the New York of the West. The railroad never arrived, the boom collapsed, and the Victorian seaport it left behind is now a National Historic Landmark district. The red-brick Jefferson County Courthouse, finished in 1892 with a clock tower on the bluff, presides over downtown, and the uptown streets are lined with preserved homes like the Rothschild House. Just outside town, Fort Worden's coastal batteries and lighthouse make up a state park on the strait.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Cannon Beach is organized around a single landmark. Haystack Rock, a 235-foot basalt sea stack, rises straight out of the sand about a mile and a half south of downtown, close enough to reach on foot at low tide. Its base is ringed by protected tide pools of sea stars and anemones, and its grassy slopes attract a colony of tufted puffins each spring as part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Downtown spreads across the blocks behind the beach with galleries and cafes, while Ecola State Park wraps the northern headland in forest trails, whale-watching overlooks, and views back toward the rock.

Bandon, Oregon

Bandon stands where the Coquille River empties into the Pacific, and its compact Old Town lines the waterfront with galleries, seafood counters, and cranberry-themed shops. The fruit is no gimmick, as the area grows about 95 percent of Oregon's cranberries and has thrown a Cranberry Festival every September since 1947. Across the river mouth, the red-and-white Coquille River Lighthouse has marked the harbor entrance since 1896 and is now part of Bullards Beach State Park. South of downtown, the Face Rock viewpoint looks out over a scatter of sea stacks named in Coquille legend, with a beach loop below open for walking and rockhounding.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Carmel-by-the-Sea fits galleries, courtyards, and cottages into a single square mile, a downtown so unusual it has no street addresses and no streetlights by long-standing local rule. Carmel Beach closes the western end of Ocean Avenue with white sand and wind-bent cypress. South of the village, the Carmel Mission, founded in 1770, served as Junipero Serra's headquarters for the California missions and is the site of his grave. Nearby Pebble Beach Golf Links, open since 1919, ranks among the most celebrated public courses in the country.

Monterey, California

Monterey was the capital of Alta California under Spain and Mexico, and the old town still shows it. California's First Theatre, the First Brick House, and other early landmarks line the Path of History walking tour through Monterey State Historic Park. On the water, Cannery Row, John Steinbeck's old sardine-packing district, now leads to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, regarded as one of the best in the world. Boats leave Fisherman's Wharf for whale-watching trips on Monterey Bay, and the poet Robinson Jeffers's hand-built Tor House still stands above the shore in nearby Carmel.

Pacific Grove, California

A short drive from Monterey, Pacific Grove wraps around the tip of the peninsula in Victorian cottages and tide-pool coastline. The town goes by Butterfly Town USA for the monarchs that overwinter by the thousands at its Monarch Grove Sanctuary. Pacific Grove also claims Point Pinos Lighthouse, lit in 1855 and the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast, and a paved coastal trail past Lovers Point links its beaches and rocky coves. The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History focuses on local wildlife, and a bronze plaque near the water remembers John Denver, who died offshore in 1997.

Fort Bragg, California

Fort Bragg, a town of fewer than 7,000 on the Mendocino Coast, is best known for two things. The Skunk Train has carried passengers through the redwoods on tracks first laid in 1885, following Pudding Creek and the Noyo River across trestles and through tunnels. Glass Beach, a former dump where decades of surf polished broken glass into smooth pebbles, gives the town its other signature, explained at the small Sea Glass Museum. Downtown along Highway 1 lines up local spots like North Coast Brewing and Cowlick's Ice Cream.

Morro Bay, California

Morro Bay is hard to mistake for anywhere else on California's Central Coast. Morro Rock, a 576-foot volcanic plug, guards the harbor entrance and headlines the chain of ancient peaks known as the Nine Sisters. The Embarcadero curls along the water with seafood houses and otter-watching spots, while Main Street lines up shops and a restored vintage movie house. Black Hill, another of the Nine Sisters, rises in Morro Bay State Park with trails and views back over the rock and the estuary.

The Quiet Side Of The Pacific

The common thread is water and a slower pace. These ten towns stretch over more than a thousand miles of coastline, and each one trades scale for character, whether that means the cottages of Carmel, the sea stacks at Cannon Beach, or the Victorian streets of Port Townsend. Quiet downtowns, working harbors, and easy beach access make any of them worth a weekend, with whales and otters often just offshore.