Coos Bay Harbor

A good place to take in the bustling Coos Bay Harbor is the waterfront boardwalk and overlook pier (U.S. 101 and Anderson Ave.) where you can check out the oceangoing freighters, visit a restored tugboat, and learn of the harbor’s history courtesy of interpretive placards. A 400-gallon saltwater aquarium holds fish and other marine life of Coos Bay [1].

This is the largest coastal harbor between San Francisco [2] and Puget Sound [3] (more than 100 deepwater vessels call each year), and it’s fun to watch the ships docking and the portside wood-chip piles growing by dozens of feet overnight. Wood chips are Oregon [4]’s primary forest-product export—raw log exports (which formerly made Coos Bay the world’s busiest lumber shipment center) are now prohibited.