TripAdvisor Traveler Rating based on
47 reviews
History comes alive at Cannon Beach History Center & Museum. Serving the Cannon Beach and Arch Cape with exhibits on the history of the area, cottages, shipwrecks, the famous cannon and more.
Donation based.
TripAdvisor
This is the best small town museum I’ve seen. The exhibits are really well done and there’s great artifacts such as the original cannon that gave the town its name. I learned about the cannon, the shipwreck it was from, the geology of haystack rock, and the history of the town and its past problems with a tsunami and septic problems that drove its incorporation.
If you have come this far, do ensure that you visit this history center, it's worth it's weight in gold.
We met with the new manager Andrea and Deanna to see what they had on our Lighthouse at Tillamook Rock and realized that this museum is the historical ground zero for Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. We will be donating more items about Tilly. The large replica of Tilly was built to scale and donated and can be viewed 24 hours a day through the glass-windowed house that surrounds it. I was surprised to see a porthole that I had donated in 1980 with a lighthouse picture loop. By supporting this museum you support "Terrible Tilly".
I am a native Portlander (Oregon) and grew up going to the Oregon Coast. Yet, I somehow missed the history of the "Daddy Train" which I learned about at the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum. I also attended a lovely jazz concert there for an audience of 30. Cannon Beach is known as the artist town of the Oregon Coast, so it would be easy to focus on the galleries and quaint restaurants along front street. However, going a couple blocks inland to the Museum is a must. There is a long history to Cannon Beach, long before it became a very wealthy coastal town known for its art galleries. The power brokers of Portland vacationed side-by-side with the homesteaders of Oregon -- a story worth knowing told by the staff of this charming museum.
We spent an enjoyable hour here leaning about the area. The museum building is beautiful and new. We walked from our lodging which was great as Cannon Beach has lots of traffic. A very busy town so a quiet museum was a real treat. I think this is a museum for adults more than kids. I would go again.