Cannon Beach — A Small Town Full of Big Surprises

You will find the town of Cannon Beach on the Northern Oregon Coast just off Highway 101. The town has long been a popular destination for visitors from Portland, the closest city 81 miles to the east, as well as with visitors from Seattle and tourists from far and near.

      Outstanding attractions near the town include Ecola State Park with its panoramic views of Haystack Rock, the natural icon of the area that looms over the town’s windswept pristine beach. The park offers ever-changing views from the vantage of a seagull soaring over the Pacific coast. Don’t be surprised if you spy whales sounding miles out to sea off the park, making their annual migration north in the spring and south again in the fall and winter. The force of nature in the area lends itself to art, and the galleries in town enrich the annual gatherings that revolve around the Kite Festival in April, Sand Castle Days in June, and the Stormy Weather Festival in November.

Long Spells of Sunny Skies

Temperatures in the area vary from 37°F (2°C) in the winter to 70°F (21°C) in the summer, with humidity ranging between 75% in July and 84% in January. December is the wettest month, and the region receives 74 inches of rain on average a year. Yet the wet weather clears off like magic for long spells of sunny skies and clean, brilliant scenery during the spring, summer, and fall.

Tower of Rock

Towering 235 feet above sea level, Haystack Rock imposes its massive presence on all life in the area, providing sanctuary to countless seagulls and other ocean-going birds that nest on its dome, and to colonies of sea lions and other marine life that cling to its bedrock. The rock continues as it has for eons to stand up to the massive power the ocean’s tides and

storms.

Haystack Rock gained status as a Marine Garden in 1990, ensuring that all living things strong enough to endure life in and around the rock’s large tide pools are protected, including the many types of starfish, sea anemone, crabs, chitons, and sea slugs or (nudibranks) that make the rock home. Large green sea anemones exposed at low tide can live to be 100 years old.

Whales Ahoy

Just off shore from Haystack, you’ll see Gray Whales in the spring plying their way to their calving grounds in Alaskan waters, and then again in the late fall and around Christmas time while on their way to their winter playground in Baja. Early mornings are best for catching whale spouts on clear days when you may see their misty plumes light up from the low angle of the sun looking out to sea from Ecola State Park. Ecola means “whale” in the indigenous language of the Salish

Indians.

 With a population of 1,588 in 2000, Cannon Beach takes its name from a small, iron cannon that washed ashore from the "The Shark," a U.S. Navy schooner that shipwrecked in 1846 on nearby Arch Cape. You can see the cannon today at the Cannon Beach Historical Society in town. But the town site has known more illustrious visitors, as Captain William Clark saw fit to visit present-day Cannon Beach in 1806. The town stretches four miles along the coast with the bookends of Ecola State Park to the north and Tolovana Park to the south. You’ll fine the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce information center at the center of town, not far from where the Warren Hotel opened in 1912 to serve Portland tourists and what was then a hamlet of 75 residents. Loggers ruled the land in those days of tall timber.

‘The Most Pleasing Prospects My Eyes Ever Surveyed’

Yet it was much before, from the vantage of Tillamook Head (now part of Ecola State Park) where Captain William Clark took pause to record in his journal that, "From this point I beheld the grandest and most pleasing prospects which my eyes ever surveyed." Clark’s view included the majesty of Haystack Rock and the Needles, and the seven miles of the "singing sands" along the beach framed by sea surf as far as his gaze would take him to the south.

In the winter of 1805, Captains Meriwether Lewis, Clark, and the men who formed the Corps of Discovery made had camp at Fort Clatsop (near present-day Warrenton) to repair before returning east to recount their adventures to a waiting American public and President Thomas Jefferson. It was a wet and miserable winter for the men. Boredom set in and misery grew until one day when Indian visitors came by to inform them of strange news.

‘Monster on the Sand’

Corps of Discovery member Joseph Whitehouse recounted on December 27, 1805, that "In the Evening some Indians came to our Fort. They informed us by signs, that a large Fish was drove by the Wind & waves on the shore near to where their lodges were, & we all suppose from the description they gave of it, that it must be a Whale."

The remains of the leviathan had washed ashore on what is now Cannon Beach. Captain Clark and some of the men toured the site of the mammal’s undoing. The Captain remarked to say on January, 8, 1806 that his men had, "found only the Skelleton of this Monster on the Sand ... this Skeleton measured 105 feet."

The giant surprise must have given the men pause, as it would to anyone today. The specimen is believed to have been a Blue Whale, an elusive and rare creature today more than twice the size of the more common Gray Whale that is well known to the waters in the area. The immensity of the situation was not lost on Captain Clark, who made a point of buying 300 pounds of much prized whale blubber from the local Indians. Who got the better end of the deal? Perhaps both sides won out. For they had both gained a deeper understanding of a landscape that remains as captivating today as it was in their day.

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