Twin Harbors Beach State Park

The land here served the U.S. Army as a training and barracks ground before it ever became a park. The state began piecing it together in 1937, when Grays Harbor County donated the old military barracks site, and a few years later a right-of-way to the beach was added, making Twin Harbors the very first state park on Washington's Pacific coast.

The last of the old army barracks came down in the 1970s, and today the park spreads across a couple hundred acres of dune, forest, and shorefront. It set the pattern for the string of ocean parks that followed up and down this coast, but it still feels like the original: unfussy, wide open, and built around the simple pleasure of a huge beach and a place to camp beside it.

The beach itself is the headline, a broad, hard-packed expanse that seems to run forever in both directions. It is flat enough for kite-flying and beachcombing, and firm enough in places that cars are allowed on the sand, though the surf is cold and the currents are strong, so this is a wading-and-walking ocean more than a swimming one.

Set back from the tideline, the half-mile Shifting Sands nature trail loops through the dunes and into a quiet grove of shore pine, with interpretive signs explaining how this fragile edge of the continent is built. All of it is the work of moving sand: rivers deep in the state carry sediment to the sea, and waves and currents pile it back onto this shore, pushing sand up the beach in summer and dragging it away in winter while the southwest wind sculpts the dunes into long ridges along the coast.

Ask a local why they love Twin Harbors and the answer is often razor clams. The beaches near Westport are a famous digging ground, and the state opens digs on selected days through fall, winter, and spring, timed to good low tides and only after testing shows the clams are safe to eat. On an open evening the dark beach fills with lantern light as diggers work the wet sand for the fast-burrowing clams.

It is a genuine Northwest tradition, and it gives the park a season all its own. Even if you never pick up a clam gun, the same low tides that draw the diggers leave a wide, glassy beach perfect for a long walk, and the town of Westport just up the road runs on the same tides, sending out charter boats for salmon, halibut, and tuna and hauling the catch back to its working docks.

The park lies right on State Route 105 a couple of miles south of Westport, an easy drive out onto the Grays Harbor spit from the main coast highway. You will need a Discover Pass to park for a day visit, and campers should book ahead, especially for summer weekends and for the popular clam-dig dates when the whole place fills.

Come dressed for the coast: the wind blows nearly always and the sand blows with it, so a windbreaker and a warm layer earn their keep even under blue sky. Give yourself time to walk the beach, poke through the driftwood, and take the Shifting Sands loop, and if the tide charts line up with an open dig, you will see the park at its liveliest. It is an honest, unpolished piece of Pacific shore, the first one Washington ever set aside, and still one of the most rewarding.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.