Ecola State Park, the Grandest Prospect
Near Cannon Beach, Oregon
North of town, the land rises into more than one thousand acres of headland, forest, and hidden cove known as Ecola State Park. It stretches roughly nine miles along the coast, from the northern edge of Cannon Beach to the southern edge of Seaside, and it holds some of the most sweeping ocean views on the entire Oregon shore. When William Clark climbed to a viewpoint here in eighteen oh six, he wrote that it was, in his words, the grandest and most pleasing prospects his eyes had ever surveyed.
The park was born in the winter of nineteen thirty two, when about four hundred fifty acres were given or sold to the state of Oregon by prominent families who owned land on the headland. From the day-use area you can look south to Haystack Rock and north to the offshore hulk of the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. A network of trails threads through the park, including the Clatsop Loop, which retraces the route Clark and his party walked over Tillamook Head, and a long stretch of the Oregon Coast Trail.
Watch the meadows for Roosevelt elk and the sky for bald eagles.
