Haystack Rock, the Beacon of Cannon Beach
Near Cannon Beach, Oregon
Rising two hundred thirty five feet straight out of the surf, Haystack Rock is one of the most photographed landmarks on the entire Pacific coast, and it is far more than a pretty silhouette. This is a sea stack, a tower of basalt left standing after millions of years of ocean waves chewed away the softer rock around it. The stone itself is far older than the beach.
It flowed here as molten lava from volcanic eruptions in eastern Oregon roughly fifteen to sixteen million years ago, traveling down ancient river valleys all the way to the sea before hardening into the rugged column you see today. When the tide drops, a broad apron of tide pools opens at its base, and this intertidal shelf is one of Oregon's protected Marine Gardens. Reach into those pools and you will find orange and purple sea stars, green anemones, hermit crabs, chitons, limpets, and the occasional nudibranch.
But the rule here is strict. You may look, but you may not take. Nothing, living or not, may be removed from the rock or its tide pools, and climbing above the barnacle line is forbidden, because the rock is also a nursery.
From roughly April through July, tufted puffins return here to nest in burrows on the grassy upper slopes. With their black bodies, bright orange bills, and golden head tufts, they are the easiest tufted puffins to see anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, and June and July are the best months to spot them. They share the rock with nesting cormorants, gulls, and, some years, peregrine falcons hunting overhead.
In summer, volunteers from the Haystack Rock Awareness Program set up spotting scopes on the sand at low tide, ready to point out a puffin or explain a sea star to anyone who asks. It is a rare thing, a wild seabird colony and a thriving tide pool community you can walk right up to on foot. Stand here at sunset, with the rock glowing and the surf breaking around its base, and it is easy to understand why hundreds of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to this beach every year.
