9 Picture-Perfect Pacific Coast Towns

The Pacific Coast holds some of the most visually striking small towns in the United States, where every turn brings either a sweeping coastline or a rugged mountain backdrop. Capitola's colorful waterfront houses stair-step down to Soquel Creek. Mendocino's Victorian village sits directly on headlands above green Pacific waters. Port Townsend's harbor views frame the Olympic and Cascade Mountains on opposite horizons. These nine towns pair specific natural settings with architecture or scenery worth the trip on its own.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Carmel-by-the-Sea, on the Monterey Peninsula in California, is built around storybook cottages tucked among pines on winding lanes that look deliberately imperfect. The town has no streetlights and no street numbers in most of the residential core, which preserves its village feel. Scenic Road follows the coast south of the village, and Carmel Beach's white sand and surf sit at the end of Ocean Avenue, the main downtown street. Just south of town, Point Lobos State Natural Reserve protects cypress groves, rocky coves, and tide pools, and gets cited as one of the best small-park drives on the California coast.

Bandon, Oregon

Bandon sits at the mouth of the Coquille River on the southern Oregon coast, where a field of offshore sea stacks rises directly out of the Pacific. Face Rock State Scenic Viewpoint looks out over the most famous of them, including one silhouette that reads as a human face. A few miles north across the river, the white-and-red Coquille River Lighthouse anchors Bullards Beach State Park, where the river meets the ocean beside a long sandy beach and a jetty known for storm-watching. Just east, the vertical-lift Bullards Bridge carries US-101 across the Coquille River, one of the more unusual working bridges on the coast.

Cayucos, California

Cayucos, on Estero Bay about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, bills itself as "the last of the California beach towns," a reference to how little it has changed compared to its resort neighbors. A single-story downtown runs along Ocean Avenue, one block inland from a long sand beach and the wooden Cayucos Pier, which juts nearly 1,000 feet into the bay. The surrounding headlands and bluffs frame the town, and just north, Harmony Headlands State Park has a 1.5-mile trail out to remote Pacific coast bluffs with no development in sight.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Cannon Beach, on Oregon's north coast, is organized around one of the most photographed rocks on the Pacific. Haystack Rock rises 235 feet out of the surf just offshore, anchoring a wide sand beach with two smaller formations called the Needles nearby. National Geographic included Cannon Beach in its 2013 list of the world's most beautiful places, and the view has not changed since. The town itself runs parallel to the beach with low-rise inns, galleries, and restaurants, and the tidal pools around Haystack Rock reveal starfish and anemones at low tide.

Newport, Oregon

Newport sits on Yaquina Bay on the central Oregon coast, with a working fishing fleet, a historic Bayfront district, and two distinct beach areas. Nye Beach is the walkable old resort neighborhood backed by a seaside cliff, and Agate Beach State Recreation Site to the north connects to the beach through a pedestrian tunnel under US-101. The real landmark is Yaquina Head, a basalt headland just north of town capped by the 93-foot Yaquina Head Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. At the south end of town, the green Yaquina Bay Bridge, a 1936 Conde McCullough arch, spans the bay and counts as one of the signature coastal bridges in the state.

Port Townsend, Washington

Port Townsend, on the northeastern tip of the Quimper Peninsula in Washington, is a historic maritime town with views that frame the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Range to the east across Puget Sound. The downtown holds one of the best collections of Victorian commercial architecture on the West Coast, most of it built during an 1880s boom that was supposed to turn the town into a major railroad terminus. That never happened, which is why so much of the original downtown and uptown is still standing. Fort Worden State Park north of town preserves a former coast artillery fort with beaches and miles of trails, and nearby Fort Flagler and Fort Casey complete a system of three late-19th-century forts that once guarded the entrance to Puget Sound.

Capitola, California

Capitola, at the mouth of Soquel Creek on Monterey Bay, is built around the brightly painted Venetian Court beachfront apartments, a 1920s stucco complex that has become the town's signature view. The main village clusters at the creek mouth with restaurants, a pier, and Capitola Beach, and taller seaside cliffs north and south frame the village. New Brighton State Beach a mile east adds a longer stretch of sand and bluff-top camping. The town was the first resort on the Pacific Coast when it was founded as Camp Capitola in 1869.

Mendocino, California

Mendocino, population about 700, sits directly on dramatic headlands above the Pacific on the Northern California coast. The village is essentially a preserved 19th-century New England-style settlement built by transplanted lumber workers, with wooden water towers and salt-bleached Victorian homes still standing. Mendocino Headlands State Park wraps around three sides of town, with footpaths along the bluff edge and stairs down to Big River Beach and Portuguese Beach. Just south, the Big River estuary opens eight miles of flat-water paddling inland without any road access, a rare combination on the coast.

Florence, Oregon

Florence sits at the mouth of the Siuslaw River on the central Oregon coast, at the northern edge of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, which contains the largest expanse of coastal sand dunes in North America. The dunes stretch roughly 40 miles south along the coast toward Coos Bay and North Bend. The town's historic Old Town district faces the river on Bay Street, with restored 1890s buildings housing restaurants and shops. About 12 miles north, the Heceta Head Lighthouse stands on its namesake headland above a cove beach, one of the most photographed lighthouses on the West Coast.

Nine Towns, One Coastline

The Pacific Coast runs for about 1,300 miles between the Mexican border and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and these nine towns pick out a small handful of the most distinct stopping points along the way. Each one is organized around a specific natural feature: a headland, a pier, a rock formation, a river mouth, a stretch of dunes, or a set of historic buildings that could only exist on this coastline. Visitors should plan on bringing a camera.