Haystack Rock and the Needles at Cannon Beach, Oregon

Cannon Beach runs on visitors, and the city plans around it

ByJoel Koskinen

Photo: King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cannon Beach has roughly 1,500 year-round residents. On a summer Saturday the population on the beach and along Hemlock Street is many times that, and almost every business in town is built around those visitors.

Haystack Rock is the obvious draw. The 235-foot sea stack, protected as part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, has tide pools at its base at low tide and a tufted puffin colony on its upper ledges from spring into summer. The city’s volunteer Haystack Rock Awareness Program puts interpreters on the beach to keep people off the rock and away from nesting birds.

How the town pays its bills

Lodging is the economic engine. Cannon Beach has hotels, motels and a large number of vacation rentals, and the transient room tax charged on overnight stays makes up a big share of city revenue. Under Oregon law, a portion of new lodging tax money must go to tourism promotion or tourism-related facilities, which shapes how the city can spend it.

The town has also chosen to stay small and low-rise. Cannon Beach has long banned chain restaurants and formula retail downtown, and design rules govern building size and appearance. The result is a shopping street of galleries, bookstores, bakeries and independently owned restaurants, which is part of what visitors come for.

The pressure points

The same success creates the problems. Housing for workers is scarce because so many homes are second homes or rentals. Employers recruit from Seaside, Astoria and beyond, and traffic on U.S. 101 at the Cannon Beach exits backs up on summer weekends. The city has studied limits on vacation rental permits and pushed for workforce housing, and those debates come back at nearly every council election.

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