Cape Blanco’s lighthouse is the oldest on the Oregon coast, and the historic farmhouse next door only gives free tours for one more month
Cape Blanco holds two Oregon superlatives at once, and neither one gets old with repetition. Its light station has been running since 1870, longer than any other lighthouse still standing on this coast, and the headland underneath it is the westernmost point in the entire state — beaten only by a sliver of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the whole Lower 48.
—
Psst — we made you a West Coast Adventure Map. Nearly 1,900 of our favorite spots, already pinned, ready to load into Google Maps in two clicks — grab it here.
—
The tower itself is short by lighthouse standards — just 59 feet tall. But it sits on a headland roughly 245 feet above the ocean, high enough to throw its beam 22 miles out to sea. Built with bricks made right there on-site, it was lit for the first time on December 20, 1870, and it’s been running ever since.
Here’s the part that trips people up: you can’t tour the inside of the tower anymore. Structural issues closed it to climbers in 2021, so what you actually get now is a quarter-mile walk from the parking gate to see it up close. The volunteer-run interpretive center next to it stays open daily except Tuesdays, through the end of October.
Drive in and you’ll pass the Historic Hughes House first, an eleven-room Victorian farmhouse a Sixes River dairy rancher built for his family in 1898. Volunteers still give free walk-through tours of it, but only from July 1 through September 30 — this year’s window closes in about a month.
It’s a short detour off Highway 101 just north of Port Orford, and the road simply dead-ends at the cape. You’ll need an Oregon State Parks day-use parking permit to leave a car there — $10 a day for Oregon residents, $12 for everyone else. Neither the America the Beautiful Pass nor the NW Forest Pass covers it, since this permit belongs to the state, not the feds.
Want to turn the stop into an actual hike? Keep driving north to the Cape Blanco Airport Road trailhead for Blacklock Point. It’s a 4.3-mile out-and-back with just 308 feet of climbing, ending at a cliff-top view of the same stretch of coast lighthouse keepers once watched for wrecks.
My honest take: the lighthouse alone isn’t worth a special trip now that you can’t climb it, but paired with the farmhouse and that hike, Cape Blanco earns a half-day easily. Would you still stop for a lighthouse you can only look at from the outside?
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here, lock in your hotel in Port Orford or Bandon before the good rooms are gone, or skip both and book a camper van instead — Cape Blanco’s own campground has full hookups if you’d rather just stay put.
Rules and fees change — always confirm current requirements before you go.
