A few years after moving to Washington’s coast, I began to wonder why more people didn’t know what was here.
I live near Willapa Bay, one of America’s great oyster-growing places. Drive north and you reach the fishing port of Westport. Head south and you cross the Columbia into Astoria and Oregon’s seafood coast. Oysters, Dungeness crab, shrimp, clams and fish are part of everyday life here. So are the people who grow, catch, process and serve them.
Yet outside the Pacific Northwest, this area rarely comes to mind when people talk about traveling for food.
Consider the scale. The Willapa Bay alone generates more than twice the oyster farm sales of Massachusetts or Virginia, nearly six times Louisiana’s, and more than six times Maine’s. Those are entire states with celebrated oyster traditions. Willapa is one bay.
And oysters are only the beginning.
There are working harbors, historic seafood towns and remarkable landscapes. There are people with stories worth hearing, and wine and beer worth bringing to the table. There are reasons to visit in every season, even when the weather reminds you that you are on the Pacific coast.
This is the place that inspired 46 Wild.
46 Wild. Taste the Wild Pacific.
We’re starting with the food because it offers such a vivid introduction to the coast. Our goal is to help people discover the places and people behind it, then find their own reasons to come and stay awhile.
This is a working coast. Its character comes from the farms, boats, waterfronts and small towns that are already here. I want more people to experience and support them throughout the year, while the place remains itself.
I know the feeling of visiting somewhere before the rest of the world has figured it out. You remember the people you met. You remember what you ate. Years later, you can still say, “I was there when.”
This coast offers that feeling now. And the seafood gives you a very good reason to come.
The Willapa Bay figure is an estimate of annual oyster farm sales. State comparisons use the USDA’s 2023 Census of Aquaculture for Massachusetts, Virginia and Louisiana, and Maine’s 2023 oyster landings value.