Cannon Beach

About Cannon Beach

Cannon Beach is the Oregon Coast's marquee town for one towering reason: Haystack Rock, the 235-foot sea stack that rises straight out of the sand and anchors one of the most photographed beaches in America. At low tide you can walk right up to its tide pools — starfish, anemones, and in late spring and early summer, tufted puffins nesting on the upper ledges. The town behind the beach has kept chains out and character in: weathered-shingle architecture, galleries, bakeries, and a strict small-scale feel that also means hotel inventory is tight. Summer weekends book out months ahead, which is when rates that aren't displayed on the open web matter most — a meaningful difference some nights, more modest others.

The lodging decision here is mostly about geography. Downtown puts you steps from restaurants and galleries; Midtown is the quiet stretch between the two hubs; Tolovana, at the south end, trades the shops for calmer sand and longer beach walks with Haystack Rock in the distance; and Arch Cape, a few miles further south, is barely a town at all — just houses, cliffs, and beach. Ecola State Park, immediately north, delivers the famous headland viewpoint over the coastline and trail access to a truly wild stretch of shore.

Our Travel Editor's Cannon Beach advice: pay for oceanfront here if you ever will anywhere — falling asleep to the surf and waking up to Haystack Rock out the window is the entire point of the trip. Check the tide table the night before and hit the rock at low tide in the early morning, when the tide pools are exposed and the beach photographers have it mostly to themselves. And don't dismiss the off-season: storm-watching from a fireplace room in January is its own kind of trip, at a fraction of July's rates.

— Our Travel Editor