7 of the Most Charming Small Towns to Visit on the Pacific Coast
Highway 101 runs along the western edge of the United States from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Mexican border, with shorter stretches of Highway 1 picking up where 101 turns inland. The towns along this 1,500-mile coastline have always been shaped more by the ocean than by the highway connecting them, and the seven below have all held onto a specific local character that the larger coastal cities have lost to growth. Some grew up around 19th-century lumber and fishing industries, some around military installations, some around the kind of countercultural arts community that took root on the West Coast in the 1960s and 1970s. Each works as a long-weekend destination on its own terms, and most are within a half-day drive of one another along the same coastal road.
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Cannon Beach sits on the northern Oregon coast, an hour and a half west of Portland. The town's defining landmark is Haystack Rock, a 235-foot sea stack rising directly off the beach. The base of the rock is a designated Marine Garden and Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, with tide pools that contain sea anemones, ochre sea stars, hermit crabs, and a regular tufted puffin colony nesting on the rock's upper ledges from April through July. The town's downtown runs four walkable blocks along Hemlock Street, with art galleries, the working Cannon Beach Book Company independent bookstore, and the Cannon Beach Bakery (operating since 1932). Ecola State Park, just north of town, has the long beach view that opens almost every coastal documentary about Oregon.
Ferndale, California
Ferndale sits on a coastal floodplain in Humboldt County, about five hours north of San Francisco. The downtown contains one of the most intact Victorian commercial streetscapes in the western United States, including the 1894 Gingerbread Mansion, the 1899 Victorian Inn, and rows of Eastlake-style storefronts in working use. The Ferndale Repertory Theatre, in the 1920 State Theater building, has been running community theater seasons since the 1970s. The Kinetic Grand Championship, a 50-mile cross-country race of human-powered, self-propelled "kinetic sculpture" vehicles that takes over Memorial Day weekend each May, finishes on Main Street; the Kinetic Sculpture Museum on Main Street displays past entries year-round.
Ashland, Oregon
Ashland sits in the Rogue Valley near the California border, in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1935, runs an eight-month season across three theaters (the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre, the Angus Bowmer Theatre, and the smaller Thomas Theatre), staging Shakespeare alongside contemporary work. It is one of the largest professional regional theater operations in the country. Lithia Park, a 100-acre park designed in 1916 by John McLaren (who also designed San Francisco's Golden Gate Park), runs from the central plaza along Ashland Creek through downtown. Mount Ashland, 18 miles south of town, runs a working ski area through winter.
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea is a one-square-mile town on the Monterey Peninsula, with no residential mail delivery, no street numbers, no parking meters, and no neon signs by long-standing city ordinance. The Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, founded by JunÃpero Serra in 1771, is one of the more architecturally intact California missions and contains Serra's grave. Carmel Beach, at the foot of Ocean Avenue, is a wide white-sand crescent regarded as one of the more photogenic public beaches on the California coast. Restaurants and small inns sit in interior courtyards throughout the downtown grid, with the Tuck Box, La Bicyclette, and Mission Ranch (owned by Clint Eastwood, who served as mayor 1986-1988) among the long-running fixtures.
Friday Harbor, Washington
Friday Harbor is the only incorporated town on San Juan Island and is reached by ferry from Anacortes (about 75 minutes) or by floatplane from Seattle. The town is the main port for the southern resident orca population that summers in the Salish Sea, and the Whale Museum on First Street has been running since 1979 as the country's first museum dedicated to whales in their habitat. Lime Kiln Point State Park on the island's west side is one of the better land-based whale-watching points in the world, with orcas regularly passing within a few hundred yards of the cliff. The downtown grid spreads four blocks back from the ferry dock with seafood restaurants, a working farmers' market on Saturdays, and the Friday Harbor House overlooking the harbor.
Port Townsend, Washington
Port Townsend sits on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, where Admiralty Inlet enters Puget Sound. In the 1870s and 1880s the town speculated heavily that it would become the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad; when Tacoma got the line instead, the building boom stopped abruptly, and as a result the downtown contains one of the most intact concentrations of Victorian commercial architecture on the west coast. The Port Townsend Historic District is one of only three Victorian seaports nationally designated by the National Park Service. Fort Worden State Park, on the town's north edge, is a former coastal artillery base now converted to a state park, conference center, and the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, with miles of preserved bunkers, parade grounds, and beach.
Cambria, California
Cambria sits halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on Highway 1, at the southern edge of the Big Sur coast. Moonstone Beach Drive runs along the bluff above Moonstone Beach, where the moonstone agate the beach is named for still washes up regularly with the tide. Nitt Witt Ridge, on the hillside above town, is a folk-art residence built between 1928 and 1981 by Arthur Beal almost entirely from beer cans, abalone shells, and other recycled materials; it is a California Historical Landmark and remains a private home, viewable from the road below. Hearst Castle, six miles north at San Simeon, sits above the town with daily guided tours through the William Randolph Hearst estate.
Coastal Charm
The seven Pacific Coast towns above each work for different reasons: Cannon Beach for the marine reserve at Haystack Rock, Ferndale for the kinetic sculpture race and the Victorian streetscape, Ashland for the Shakespeare festival, Carmel for the no-street-address ordinance and the mission, Friday Harbor for the orcas, Port Townsend for the railroad-town-that-wasn't, Cambria for the moonstone beach and the recycled-castle on the hill. Most are reachable along the same coastal highway, which makes a long road trip the natural way to combine them.
