Pacific City — Dory Boats, a Second Haystack Rock, and Oregon's Original Oceanfront Brewpub

What Actually Makes Pacific City Different

Start with what Pacific City is not: it is not its own city. It's an unincorporated community in Tillamook County, planned by the county jointly with the adjoining hamlet of Woods as the "Pacific City/Woods Community," and every layer of local government a buyer would deal with elsewhere in a beach town -- zoning, building permits, road maintenance, sheriff patrol -- runs through Tillamook County directly rather than through a Pacific City city hall, because there isn't one. That structure matters for STR permitting and land-use decisions specifically, both of which are decided at the county commissioner level, not by a local council that residents can more easily reach or run for.

The town's real, defining identity is the Cape Kiwanda dory fleet, and it is a genuinely unusual thing on the American coastline: roughly 250 flat-bottomed, high-bowed dory boats -- descended from the double-ended Grand Banks dories once used in the Newfoundland cod fishery -- still launch directly off the open sand at Cape Kiwanda into the surf, with no harbor, breakwater, or boat ramp involved, and come back the same way, riding a wave onto the beach. That practice traces to the 1880s: an 1886 cannery once processed fish near the mouth of the Nestucca River, but as commercial gillnetting depleted salmon runs by the early 1900s, local fishermen shifted to hook-and-line dory fishing launched straight from shore, and the fleet grew to several hundred boats at its mid-20th-century peak -- in 1968, by one account, one out of every three new boats licensed in the entire state of Oregon was a Cape Kiwanda dory. The safety record over more than a century of surf launches is a genuinely notable data point: only six known dorymen have died at sea since the practice began in the late 1800s, per the Pacific City Dorymen's Association's own account.

Cape Kiwanda itself carries the town's other real landmark: a Haystack Rock that most visitors researching "Haystack Rock, Oregon" don't initially know exists, because Cannon Beach's more photographed namesake, roughly 50 miles up the coast, dominates the search results. Pacific City's version sits nearly a mile offshore from the cape rather than right at the tide line, and by several coastal-guide accounts stands about 90 feet taller than Cannon Beach's rock -- a genuinely different formation geologically as well, with local guides describing it as the eroded remnant of a lava flow that once filled an ancient canyon here, versus Cannon Beach's rock, understood as a volcanic "intrusion" that pushed back into softer ground before re-erupting elsewhere. The cape's sandstone headland, including a collapsed sea cave locally called the "sinkhole," and the towering, climbable dune above the beach round out Cape Kiwanda State Natural Area as the town's primary tourist draw beyond the dory fleet itself.

The other real, dated fact worth knowing before treating Pacific City as generic "Oregon coast": Pelican Brewing Company opened here in 1996, founded by Jeff Schons and Mary Jones and built, by the brewery's own account, right at the water's edge as what it describes as Oregon's only oceanfront brewpub at the time. Under founding brewmaster Darron Welch, Pelican has since won more than 450 brewing awards, including being named 2014 World Beer Cup Champion Small Brewing Company (with Welch also named that year's Champion Brewmaster) and a 2016 Great American Beer Festival silver medal, and it has since expanded with a production brewery and taproom in Tillamook (2012) and a full restaurant and brewery in Cannon Beach (2016) -- meaning the original Pacific City oceanfront pub, not either of those newer locations, is where that identity actually started.

Finally, the most current and concrete regulatory fact about this specific market: on January 9, 2025, the Tillamook County Board of Commissioners created a short-term-rental cap-exemption zone covering the stretch of Pacific City from the Nestucca River to the ocean, and from Alder Street south to Bob Straub State Park -- a direct response to community feedback given the area's long vacation-rental history and housing stock. Of the community's 326 existing STR licenses at the time, 236 fell inside that exemption zone, along with 18 of 28 waitlisted applications; outside the exempted zone, the rest of Pacific City/Woods now operates under a hard cap of 95 licenses. That carve-out sits on top of a broader 2023 countywide ordinance that had capped STR licenses in unincorporated Tillamook County areas at roughly 1% growth above the count licensed at the time of adoption -- real, current, dollar-relevant policy for anyone underwriting a Pacific City purchase on assumed rental income. See the investment-outlook page for what that means in practice.

Dining, Recreation & Things to Do

Pelican Brewing's original Pacific City oceanfront brewpub, sitting directly at the edge of the beach, remains the town's best-known food-and-drink destination and a genuine Oregon craft-beer landmark in its own right -- not just a scenic pub with a view, but a multiple-award-winning brewery under longtime brewmaster Darron Welch. Beyond Pelican, Pacific City's dining and services cluster around the Cape Kiwanda / Pacific Avenue area near the dory-launch beach, oriented toward day-trippers and vacationers drawn by the dunes, the dory fleet, and the beach itself.

Cape Kiwanda State Natural Area is the town's primary recreational anchor: a sandstone headland with a towering, climbable sand dune, tide pools, the collapsed sea cave known locally as the "sinkhole," and views out to Pacific City's own offshore Haystack Rock. Watching the dory fleet launch and land through the surf -- a genuinely rare, hands-on working-fishery spectacle rather than a staged tourist attraction -- is a real, free activity unique to this stretch of coast. South of town, Bob Straub State Park protects the low, undeveloped Nestucca Spit between the Nestucca River and the ocean, offering a quieter beach and estuary-birding access distinct from the busier Cape Kiwanda side.