Cannon Beach Oregon Haystack Rock Puffins and Tide Pools

Downtown Cannon Beach

The village center along Hemlock Street is compact and pleasant to walk, with cedar-shingled buildings, gardens and a high number of art galleries for a town this size, many showing coastal painting, glass, photography and sculpture. You will also find bookshops, candy and kite stores, bakeries and coffee houses.

Weathered cedar shingles and gardens line the shops and galleries of downtown Cannon Beach. Photo: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

Tide pools and the Haystack Rock Awareness Program

The tide pools around Haystack Rock hold ochre sea stars, giant green anemones, mussels, chitons, crabs and sculpins. During much of the year, volunteers and staff from the city's Haystack Rock Awareness Program set up on the beach at low tide with spotting scopes and explain what you are seeing.

Low tide exposes sea stars and anemones on the rocks around the base of Haystack Rock. Photo: John Manard, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Tufted puffins

Haystack Rock is one of the most accessible places on the Oregon coast to see tufted puffins, which nest in burrows on its grassy upper slopes in spring and summer, roughly from April into August.

Tufted puffins nest on Haystack Rock during the spring and summer breeding season. Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Ecola Point

Just north of town, Ecola State Park covers the forested slopes of Tillamook Head. A winding road through Sitka spruce forest leads to Ecola Point, where short paths reach viewpoints looking south along the coast to Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock, and out to sea stacks where sea lions often haul out.

Ecola Point looks south over the coastline toward Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock. Photo: Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Indian Beach and the Clatsop Loop Trail

Further along the park road, Indian Beach is a cove popular with surfers and tide poolers, framed by rocky points and forest. From here, the Clatsop Loop Trail climbs through old forest along part of the route Lewis and Clark used, reaching a hikers' camp and a viewpoint toward Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, a decommissioned light on a sea rock about a mile offshore, first lit in 1881.

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, first lit in 1881, stands on a sea rock about a mile off Tillamook Head. Photo: Jwyoung, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Arcadia Beach

A few minutes south, Arcadia Beach State Recreation Site is a small, quiet access point with a short path down to the sand. Offshore rocks and the cliffs to the south make it scenic, and at low tide you can walk south toward Hug Point.

Arcadia Beach State Recreation Site offers beach access south of Tolovana Park. Photo: Bonnie Moreland from Oregon, United States, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Hug Point State Recreation Site

Hug Point is named for the way stagecoaches and early travelers had to hug the rocky point to pass along the beach before the coast highway existed. You can still see the old roadway cut into the sandstone.

Fall Creek spills directly onto the sand at Hug Point State Recreation Site. Photo: Jeffhollett, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Oswald West State Park

About ten miles south of town, Oswald West State Park protects a stretch of rainforest and headland.

The Neahkahnie Mountain trail is steep, with switchbacks through forest and meadow, but the view from the top is the widest on this part of the coast. On a clear day you can look north to Cannon Beach and south over Manzanita and Nehalem Bay.

Short Sand Beach sits in a sheltered cove reached by a forest trail in Oswald West State Park. Photo: Bobjgalindo, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0