Ecola State Park headland view
— — the coast the storm keeps rewriting.
Not only on a wall.
“A bluff above the Pacific north of Cannon Beach, where the coast bends west into Tillamook Head and Haystack Rock rises in the distance through the spray. The Lewis and Clark party crossed this headland in January 1806 to see a beached whale. The lighthouse offshore was abandoned in 1957. Wind moves through the spruce most days of the year.
Ecola State Park headland view, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ecola State Park covers roughly 1,300 acres of coastal headland on the northern Oregon coast, just north of Cannon Beach in Clatsop County. Ecola Point, the main overlook, sits about 150 feet above the surf and looks south toward Haystack Rock and the long curve of Cannon Beach. The park extends north over Tillamook Head, a forested basalt headland that climbs above 1,000 feet. A nine-mile section of the Oregon Coast Trail crosses the headland between Ecola Point and Seaside, much of it through old-growth Sitka spruce.
The view is built on offshore rocks. Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, called Terrible Tilly by the keepers, sits a mile out from the headland on a wave-battered basalt knob; built in 1881, it was abandoned in 1957 after seven decades of storm damage and replaced by a buoy. Haystack Rock, 235 feet of sea stack, rises south at Cannon Beach. The Pacific here is cold, around 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit through the year, and the swell rarely stops. Sea lions haul out on the closer rocks through summer.
The park is reached by a winding two-mile road off Highway 101, through coastal forest with several pull-offs. A day-use fee applies. The Ecola Point picnic area is the easiest viewpoint, with paved parking and short paths to the cliff edge. Indian Beach, a half mile north, has tidepools and surf. The Clatsop Loop interpretive trail traces part of the Lewis and Clark crossing of January 1806. The park is open daylight hours through the year, though winter storms occasionally close the access road, and the offshore lighthouse is closed to the public as a private columbarium.