Cape Flattery and Highway 112
— the road that ends where the continent does.
Not only on a wall.
“State Route 112 runs the north edge of the Olympic Peninsula along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, past pull-offs where Vancouver Island sits across the water and bald eagles work the shore. It ends at Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation. From there a short cedar boardwalk drops through coastal rainforest to four wooden platforms above sea caves, with a small lighthouse on Tatoosh Island offshore. The continent stops here. Most days the wind is doing something to the water. The Makah ask for a Recreation Pass, and the road back is long and slow. That is part of the point.
Cape Flattery and Highway 112, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Cape Flattery is the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States, on the Makah Indian Reservation at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. Washington State Route 112, the Strait of Juan de Fuca Scenic Byway, runs about 61 miles from Sappho through Clallam Bay and Sekiu to Neah Bay, following the strait with Vancouver Island visible across the water. From the trailhead a path of roughly three-quarters of a mile, much of it cedar boardwalk, descends through old-growth coastal forest to four wooden viewing platforms above the sea caves. Tatoosh Island and its small lighthouse sit half a mile offshore.
Access to Cape Flattery passes through the Makah Reservation; visitors purchase a Makah Recreation Pass, sold at shops in Neah Bay (currently $20 per vehicle, valid for the calendar year). The trail is about three-quarters of a mile each way, with steps and boardwalk sections that go slick in rain. The Makah Cultural and Research Center in Neah Bay holds the Ozette collection, the artifacts of a coastal village preserved under a mudslide around 1750 and excavated by Washington State University archaeologists between 1970 and 1981. It is worth the stop. The route in is the same as the route out; there is no loop.
The strait reads grey more often than blue. Gray whales pass close to shore on their northbound migration through April and May; resident and transient orca pods work the offshore waters in summer. The sea caves below the cape are sized for the Pacific swell that has crossed open water from Asia, and the sound carries up to the viewing platforms. Tatoosh Island, just offshore, held a U.S. Lighthouse Service station from 1857; the light is now automated. On the clearest days the snow line on the Vancouver Island Ranges shows above the trees across the strait.