A Village of Artists

For a town of just a couple thousand people, Cannon Beach carries an outsized reputation in the art world. Its small downtown is packed with galleries showing painters, glass artists, sculptors, and photographers, many of them working from the light and moods of this very coastline. You can watch live glassblowing, browse original work by nationally known artists, and time a visit to one of the town's art festivals.

There is the Spring Unveiling in early May and the Stormy Weather Arts Festival in November, which leans into the drama of the winter coast. At the heart of it all is the Coaster Theatre Playhouse. In nineteen seventy two, Maurie Clark opened it as a live theater.

Since his death in two thousand one, it has run as a nonprofit, staging plays and musicals to this day. On June twenty-ninth of that first year, the Portland State University summer stock company opened in the newly remodeled house. The town's name has its own story.

A short naval cannon from the USS Shark washed ashore near Arch Cape in eighteen forty-six, and when it was rediscovered in eighteen ninety-eight, the find inspired the name Cannon Beach. The cannon now sits in the city museum. Outside the galleries, the two hundred thirty-five foot sea stack called Haystack Rock rises from the sand.

A sand castle contest, begun after the nineteen sixty-four tsunami flooded the area, is still held every June.