Lots of areas need improvement on the Oregon Coast (Portland: sale, houses)

[Oregonbeachlover]

In the part of the central Oregon coast I am most familiar with...Pacific City, Neskowin, Lincoln City, Depot Bay and Newport, I just see lots of touristy shops, but nothing trashy (occasional broken down tourist's car...) In fact, just south of Lincoln City is Salishan, a 5 star resort. Real estate prices have gone really crazy on the coast the past few years too, so nothing is cheap anymore.

[backdrifter]

Originally Posted by Kathleenh54

The original poster didn't say the scenery wasn't beautiful; it is. He said the towns were tacky and I have to agree. There's quite a bit of blight along the coast. Tumbledown shacks, old appliances and rusted-out cars/boats remind me of pictures of Appalachia.

I love Oregon and love the coast but have my blinders off. Towns along the coast look rundown.

Basically, that's what gives it its charm. It's rustic and real. These sum it up pretty well:

Originally Posted by Oregonbeachlover

What you may see as "tacky", I view as quaint and "beachy" and that is what makes beach towns appealing to me.

Originally Posted by illinoisboy

I loved the little fishing village feel to almost all of them, and not a single town seemed too big. Although, yes, there were plenty of newer strip malls and stores and such, the quaint feeling of the rest of the city deffinatly over-powered it..

[haggardhouseelf]

I absolutely love the Oregon coast. To my husband and I, it's one of the most beautiful places we've experienced among all the places we've been. In fact, the Oregon coast, Lake Waldo, and Crater Lake (all in Oregon) are our top favorite three places. Oregon and Hawaii I believe are the only two states in America where all people have access to the entire length of coast. There are no private beaches. This means, you could walk/climb/kayak/whatever from the WA/OR border all the way down to the CA/OR border all along the coast without interruption.

I think to really see the beauty of it all, though, you have to get out of your car! Oregon isn't the sort of place you can sit in your car and appreciate. You have to get out in it. If you want a drive-thru sort of experience, I'm sure other states will do. I hear that Colorado and parts of Montana and Wyoming are great for that sort of thing. But Oregon is different. I personally feel that the towns themselves don't look so great on the outside because the priorities here are just different. We are more about living and experiencing, dreaming and adventure... than we are about putting on a pretty face and landscaping and whatnot. And especially with the sort of weather the coast gets, and the hard winter winds and storms, why would anybody want to spend money to fix it up just so that it can get beaten up in severe weather? Business owners close up for most of the year anyway - Summer is the only time of year that many businesses on the coast are open. It's not worth it, I would imagine, to spend lots of money on aesthetics. Once you become familiar with people and places on the coast, you find your favorite spots and return there faithfully. You start to "get it".

I really love that you aren't allowed to drive on the coast. In Washington state, we were disgusted with the coast there. It was so ugly. So much development and people driving on the coast. It was awful. And in California, the beaches were always so crowded and dirty. California and the east coast beaches we've been to were just dirty and disappointing. But the Oregon coast has never disappointed us. There's treasure and beauty there. It feels magic to us. We love to go during the week when we often have entire stretches of it all to ourselves for an entire day. It feels like you're on another planet or something.

[Oregon Transplant]

In my opinion there are some really beautiful places on the Oregon Coast but much of it is hidden in State Parks and down side roads. I found that a significant part of scenic (??) Highway 101 through Oregon has been ruined by views of clearcuts, tacky strips, poor zoning controls and commercial strips that never seem to end. I found Lincoln City and Newport to be the worst towns on the coast.

Yes, the Oregon Coast can be beautiful but the towns are more like Myrtle Beach than Hilton Head.

[Oregonbeachlover]

I am retiring to Lincoln City soon. Lincoln City, with an actual picture of my beach (Roads End) was the cover picture of the June 2008 edition of "Where to Retire" magazine. The article on Lincoln City was wonderful, as they truly wrote about the essence of the town, and it is anything but trashy.

[Kathleenh54]

OF COURSE the coast is beautiful and fabulous. We refer to Oregon as 'The Adjective State' because we run out of words to describe its beauty.

BUT when we see a burned out RV on the side of the road, tops of rusted out truck cabs and battered sofas on the side of the 101, that goes beyond not wanting to 'pretty itself up' all the time. That's known as 'trash' and it shouldn't be allowed to blight the area.

[Silverfall]

I think what the OP was expecting was the towns to look more like Sisters, OR. Cute storefronts, etc. I think the issue with Newport and Lincoln City is that as you drive down 101 it looks like a giant strip mall.

I don't think Oregonians want our coast to look like Hilton Head, but we do need a better balance.

[Oregonbeachlover]

I can't speak for Newport because I do not see it as being anything like Lincoln City, but Lincoln City looks just like a quaint touristy little beach town, just as one would expect, because that is what it is. As someone else posted, to really get the ambiance, you have to turn down one of the side streets closer to the beach. If you are only driving through Lincoln City, you are still on 101 all the way through. I see all those little shops along 101 as beachy cute. I have never seen old sofas, battered or burned cars. etc. on the side of the street in LC. The locals would never put up with that. In my neighborhood, you get in trouble if don't pick up your dog's poop.

[Kathleenh54]

My DH, who is originally from the UK, was so fascinated by some of the blight that he took photographs. The burned out RV was the nadir of the ambience for me. Yuck, just.. yuck. The coast deserves better than that.

[Oregonbeachlover]

Kathleen, in defense of beautiful Lincoln City, if you saw a burned out RV, then it must have been a freak accident which could happen anywhere. The people of Lincoln City take great pride in the town. Just last year, they finished installing fancy new lamp posts on all the corners which you can see as you drive through town on 101. Many millionaires live in LC, (a house 50 yards from me is for sale for 2.75 million dollars), but the beach is a great equalizer as all the little touristy "beachy looking" shops welcome all of us, regardless of our windblown hair or sand-filled shoes. I think the lack of pretense is one of the things I love best about Oregon beach towns. For years, Lincoln City has been featured as a best place to retire in the entire US, and was just bestowed that honor again in June 2008 ( in a national magazine) including the honor of the cover picture. I think that probably speaks for itself, as I doubt with all the places in the entire US to chose from, they would've chosen a "trashy town" to feature in its magazine. However, as my neighbors and I say, we hope more people do not discover our little piece of heaven, so you go ahead and keep up your form of PR. My husband said to me last night, if a person doesn't "get it", then it obviously isn't meant for him/her.