About Pacific City Surf Travel
Hardly a “city” at all, nowadays christened “the new place to be on the Oregon coast.” Well, maybe so if you like sand whisked around your house and a steady stream of tourists nosing their way around your front yard. Once a tiny, rural fishing and farming community, Pacific City has morphed into a popular summer home and tourist community. New residential developments like Kiwanda Shores and Nestucca Ridge are erected atop sand dunes, crowded on all sides by beach grass and blowing sand — not exactly tsunami-safe. In fact, there’s a tag stuck on the doors of Pacific City motels that reads: “If you feel an earthquake, a tsunami may follow.” Where else would you find such a warning in a hotel room?
Anyway, Pacific City is about as equally famous for its funky dory fleet as it is for its funky surf spot: the flat-bottomed, user-friendly beachbreak at Cape Kiwanda, with the trippy offshore monolith for backdrop. Best when small and glassy, the sandbars can produce some shapely rights and lefts, generally soft except when the swell increases and the big outside right starts breaking off of the barren cape. The inner beachbreak, however, is heavily surfed. Bob Ledbetter and his South County Surf posse stage a longboarding contest here every August — a low-key, feel-good event featuring the occasional legend like John Peck. Beach access is simple and the waves are perfect for beginners and just about anybody else who doesn’t crave sand-sucking pits. Again, not a real core surfing destination, but a fine place to get wet if you’re in the Three Capes (Kiwanda, Lookout and Meares) area.