Depoe Bay: World's Smallest Harbor

Depoe Bay holds a record you can see from the highway: the world's smallest natural navigable harbor, a six-acre bowl of water connected to the Pacific by a very narrow channel. The town itself is young. The highway and its bridge arrived in the late nineteen twenties.

The harbor was named for Charles Depot, a Native American who received a federal land allotment here in the eighteen nineties. Harbor improvements in the late nineteen thirties deepened and widened the inner bay enough for a proper charter fishing fleet. The whale watching center on the bluff above stands at a longtime pull-off for drivers. On winter and spring days the blow spouts of gray whales are visible right from the windows.