About Newport Surf Travel
Beyond Florence, the highway skirts high along the sea, peppered with inspiring vistas that are ripe for the camera. Reefbreaks grow more common. Rock-studded coves, fir and spruce thickets and a state park around every headland. Newport, the central coast hub, comes into view above the Yaquina River, where, in 1778, Captain James Cook stamped out the first recorded Oregon landfall by the whites.
A bustling community situated where the scenic Yaquina River meets the Pacific, Newport is known for its Dungeness crab and harbor under the Yaquina Bay Bridge. The place also boasts a dedicated platoon of surfers, who basically have a lot of funky, shifty beachbreak to deal with. South Beach, on the south side of the south jetty, is a mile south of town, a few basic miles of popular beachbreak backed by sand dunes, European grass and stunted pine trees. Lots of closeouts, but has been known to produce some epic lefts. Agate Beach is another fetch of whimsical sandbars with mountains and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse to the north, protected from the north wind — the farther up the beach you go, the better. Near the head, there’s a rip current that serves as a nice paddling escalator. Above Newport proper is wide Moolack Beach, more sandbars popular with shortboarders and agate hunters.