About 130 miles west of Seattle on the Washington coast, Westport offers an affordable, accessible getaway — a working fishing town with a side of historical, beachy appeal. Morning surfers catch vast, rolling waves before a wide, sandy shore. Afternoon fishermen deliver the day’s catch to local restaurants, processors and fish markets.
About to welcome the summer’s influx of charter fishing boats and beach-tripping visitors, it’s great to visit Westport and the Gray’s Harbor region before the summer rush hits.
Take I-5 South from Seattle to WA-8 / US-12 W and stop at Brunch 101 for a hearty toast, bennies, or cheesecake French toast in Hoquiam, just past Aberdeen. Then backtrack to rejoin WA-105 toward Westport.
En route, you’ll pass Westport Winery Resort, a 21-acre campus featuring pet-friendly, walkable gardens (including a Sasquatch garden) and sculptures. Indoors, find wine tasting, a restaurant and a 2021 International Mermaid Museum, which edutains visitors on mermaids worldwide with signage, film clips, and mannequins.
Watch for the home base of Brady’s Oysters, a regional farmers market staple. The building offers a seafood market and smoked, canned oysters, sturgeon and minced razor clams.
In Westport, take Montesano Street and follow the signage to the Westport Marina. Park at the end of Westhaven Drive and climb The Port Centennial Viewing Tower’s four stories of stone steps. Take in your initial 360-degree perspective of the crashing Pacific surf along the break wall and the little town, with a 550-slip working marina.
Seafood in Westport
Then, walk down Westhaven Drive. On one side of the street, stroll past the marina’s bobbing boats — fishermen feed global appetite with millions of pounds of seafood, taken to enormous, non-retail processing facilities just southeast of the marina. A giant chart displays the month-by-month fish in season, and you may find fishermen selling tuna, crab, halibut and salmon from the docks.
If you’d prefer to hook your own, more than a dozen charter boat companies take visitors out for chinook and coho salmon, canary rockfish, lingcod, and halibut. Westport vessels sail out with experienced and novice anglers age eight and older. However, it’s not a spur-of-the-moment decision — reservations are fairly booked for this summer, except for specific weekday trips.
But fishing can be lower-key, too, with crabbing right off the boat basin’s fishing piers and docks, jetty fishing for rockfish and surf fishing for sea perch.
Merino’s Seafood Market fillets, vacuum-packs and ships any visitors’ fresh catches. If “they hook ’em, we cook ’em” sounds better, check out the market’s restaurant, which turns local lingcod, rockfish, and halibut into battered fish ‘n’ chips — and also dishes up half and whole local Dungeness crab.
Westport museums and munches
Stop by the Westport Maritime Museum within the marina area, a charming 1939 Coast Guard station housing low-tech but interesting displays in a warren of rooms. Westport is the only Washington state “Coast Guard City USA” due to the town’s welcoming attitude toward service members.
Find nooks devoted to oddities washed ashore, the town’s Coast Guard and shipwreck histories and purportedly the world’s largest salmon: Willard Sr., at 126.5 pounds. Outdoors, wander past giant whale bones and stop at the accessory building. Even non-lighthouse enthusiasts can appreciate the museum’s enormous 1888 Fresnel lens. Built in France, the former lighthouse contains more than 1,000 brilliant prisms, filling the room with glittering rainbows.
Most restaurants and shops are in the walkable downtown. Dining revolves around pub- or pizza-style meals, typically with several locally-caught seafood menu items. Popular picks include the Blackbeard’s Brewing Taphouse’s pizzas, King Tide Family Bakery and Pub, and Aloha Alabama BBQ’s southern/Hawaiian fusion fare. Or stop by vibrant Taqueria Los Tres Figgies for quesabirria (deep-fried quesadilla with a dipping broth) or picaditas plates with fresh-squeezed mango juice.
Shopping is minimal, with a smattering of shops selling ice cream, toys, T-shirts, sweatshirts and kites. But you may find just the vintage or new item you’ve been seeking at Junk Queens Tackle Box, which also sells homemade pies. Further out, stop by the South Beach Arts Association for handmade pottery, paintings and other items, and the Shop’n Kart grocery store for anything you forgot to bring from home.
Sleeping by the sea
New, hip motels have washed in more recently, such as the surfing-themed LOGE Westport, where visitors can rent wet suits, boards, kayaks and stand-up paddleboards. But the Westport By the Sea condo complex is one of the best places to window-watch the Pacific — with the bonus of easy beach access. Professional teams such as Vacation By the Sea manage owner units, or you can rent directly from Airbnb.
Roomy one- and two-bedroom condos include full kitchens and cooking equipment in various layouts, some with enormous picture-window living-room views of the Pacific Ocean’s storms and surf. The complex features a year-round hot tub and seasonal swimming pool, children’s play areas, a basketball court, a clubhouse with books, puzzles, family-friendly DVDs, and a workout room.
The complex offers direct beach access and a short stroll to Westport Light State Park. Notable for the eponymous 1898 lighthouse — the tallest in Washington state — visitors can climb the 135 steps to the lantern room, where the original Fresnel lens still signals the Gray’s Harbor entrance. This 560-acre day-use park rolls out 1,215 feet of shoreline on the Pacific Ocean and Half Moon Bay. Paths through a seagrass- and native-plant-covered landscape leads to gray-sand beaches tufted with sea stones. The shoreline is perfect for kite flying or summer surf lessons (not swimming — riptides here are severe, with a deadly history). A paved 1.3-mile walking and cycling trail leads past interpretive signs from the state park to the jetty’s shops and dining, where you can start your explorations all over again.
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