Long Beach Pacific Shoreline
Bolstad Ave beach approach
Long Beach, WA
Twenty-eight miles of open Pacific sand, wide and hard-packed enough to walk, bike, fly a kite, or drive right down to the surf.
Stand where the boardwalk meets the sand at Long Beach and look north, and the shoreline simply keeps going until it dissolves into haze. This is the beach that gives the town and the whole peninsula their name, a broad, flat, hard-packed strand that runs some twenty-eight miles up Washington's southwest coast, promoted for generations as the longest continuous beach on a peninsula anywhere in the world.
It has been a destination for well over a century, one of Washington's oldest seaside resorts, and it still does the simple things beautifully. There is room here to lose the crowd within a few minutes' walk, to fly a kite in the constant wind, to hunt for sand dollars and driftwood, and, in the marked stretches, to actually drive your car down onto the sand and set up for the day. It is the rare beach big enough to feel wild even when the town behind it is busy.
What Guests Love
- Miles of flat, hard-packed sand you can walk for as long as your legs hold out
- Driving right onto the beach in the allowed sections, a genuine novelty
- Big skies and steady wind that make it one of the country's great kite-flying spots
- Sunsets straight into the open Pacific and long, uncrowded beachcombing walks
Worth Knowing
- The beach is a legal state highway where driving is allowed, so watch for vehicles, obey posted speeds, and keep off the soft dry sand and the dunes
- The Pacific here is cold, with strong currents and sneaker waves, so wading is fine but swimming out is dangerous, and never turn your back on the surf
- Weather flips fast on this coast, so bring layers and a windbreaker even on a sunny day, and check the tide before a long walk
- Razor clam digs open on certain dates and draw big crowds, and they require a license, so check current rules if you want to join in
Details
Long Beach, WA
Learn about Long Beach Pacific Shoreline
A beach the length of a highway
The Long Beach Peninsula is a slender ribbon of land bounded by the Pacific on the west, the Columbia River to the south, and calm Willapa Bay to the east. The ocean beach runs almost the entire twenty-eight miles of it, and the sand is famously wide and firm, packed hard enough that for well over a hundred years people have used it as a road.
Long before the resorts, the Chinook people traveled this coast, using the beach itself as a natural highway between villages because the hard, level sand made an easier path than the forest behind it. That idea never really went away. Today parts of the beach are legally designated a state highway, and in the allowed sections you can drive right out onto the strand, a quirk that surprises first-time visitors and makes it easy to haul chairs, kites, and clam gear straight to the surf line.
How the resort towns grew up
Long Beach began as a summer escape for well-off Portlanders, who came downriver in the era before highways. Early visitors reached the peninsula by sternwheeler and stagecoach, and later by a little railroad, spending long weeks at the shore in a way that seems almost unimaginably slow now. It was not until roads finally connected the peninsula to the rest of Washington in the 1920s that the crowds and the day-trippers really arrived.
That long history left the peninsula with a friendly, old-fashioned resort feel: a walkable town with a beachfront boardwalk and discovery trail, saltwater-taffy shops, and just enough kitsch to be charming. But the star has always been the beach, and the towns still arrange themselves around getting people out onto it.
Wind, kites, clams, and the ends of the peninsula
The same steady ocean wind that can chill a picnic makes Long Beach one of the premier kite-flying spots in the country, and the sky over the sand is often dotted with color. The wide beach is just as good for a long bike ride, a beach fire, or a slow hunt for shells, sand dollars, and glass floats after a storm.
The peninsula's razor clam digs are a local institution, drawing diggers with buckets and headlamps to the tide line on the dates the season opens. And the beach anchors two wilder bookends: Cape Disappointment State Park with its lighthouses and dramatic headlands at the south, and Leadbetter Point with the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge at the quiet far north, where shorebirds gather and the dunes go untamed.
Enjoying it safely
The Pacific here is cold and powerful, with rip currents and the sudden surges called sneaker waves that can rush far up a flat beach. Wading and splashing at the edge are part of the fun, but real swimming is not, and the safest rule is to never turn your back on the surf and to keep small children close.
Because the beach doubles as a road, watch for slow-moving vehicles, keep to posted speeds if you drive, and stay off the soft dunes, which protect the shore and are easy to damage. Bring layers for the fast-changing coastal weather, check the tide before a long walk so you are not caught by a rising sea, and you have got yourself one of the great open beaches on the West Coast.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Long Beach
Cape Disappointment State Park
About 8 miles
Rugged headlands at the mouth of the Columbia, with two historic lighthouses, forest trails, and the Lewis and Clark interpretive center.
Leadbetter Point State Park
About 18 miles
The wild northern tip of the peninsula, all dunes, marsh, and shorebirds, joined to the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge.
Willapa National Wildlife Refuge
About 20 miles
A rich estuary refuge of tidal flats and old-growth forest along Willapa Bay, prime ground for migrating birds.
Ilwaco
About 5 miles
A small working fishing harbor at the south end, with a waterfront boardwalk, charter boats, and a Saturday market in season.