The Oregon coast—including its cliffs and promontories along Cannon Beach—was formed by 15-million-year-old volcanic lava flows originating in eastern Oregon. They coursed west along the Columbia River's route to the Pacific Ocean coast, well west of today's shoreline. Erosion and rising sea levels left remnants of the former headlands as steep-walled islands that we now call sea stacks.

The first people to inhabit this region arrived 11,000 years ago, and by the 1400s, archeological remains confirm this coast supported well-established communities of Clatsop, Nehalem, and Tillamook people. In 1806, William Clark and the Lemhi Shoshone woman, Sacagawea, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, visited this beach and traded for whale blubber with the Tillamook tribe. Clark wrote in his diary, "We set out early and proceeded to the top of the mountain (Tillamook Head). From this point, I beheld the grandest and most pleasing prospects my eyes had ever surveyed. In my front, a boundless ocean… the high land which forms this course for a long way added to the innumerable rocks of immense rise out at a great distance from the shore and against which the seas break with great force gives this coast a most romantic appearance."

Today, the beach is a popular destination, a welcome relief from interior Oregon's summer heat. Offshore stand the enormous sea stacks Clark wrote about, including the largest, iconic Haystack Rock. Sunlight warming the tidal flats alongside the cold ocean currents causes evaporative fog to swirl around the legs of beachgoers. When lifted by the day's heat, the fog forms cumulus clouds that cling to the coastal headlands.

Location research and commentary by James Baker.