The Gordon House in Silverton is the Pacific Northwest's only publicly accessible Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home — a beautifully restored Usonian masterpiece set within the Oregon Garden.
Oregon: Newport – The Devil’s Punchbowl
🌊 The Devil’s Punch Bowl, Oregon
Somewhere between Newport and Depoe Bay on the Oregon coast sits one of those places that makes you feel genuinely small — and not in a bad way. The Devil’s Punch Bowl is a Natural Area managed by Oregon State Parks, and it comes with a day-use area that pulls in visitors like moths to a very dramatic, wave-battered flame.
A word of warning before we set off: parking here is limited. Embarrassingly limited, in fact. We made the rookie mistake of rolling up at midday in peak season and spent a dispiriting twenty minutes circling like elderly vultures. Go early. Go late. Don’t be us.
The rock formation itself is extraordinary — and old. We’re talking up to 18 million years old, carved from a mixture of sandstone and siltstone laid down during the Miocene epoch, when Oregon’s coastline was still finding itself. Being soft rock, the sandstone didn’t stand much of a chance against the relentless Pacific. Waves ate away at it, year after year, century after century, until the roof eventually collapsed inward, leaving behind this enormous natural bowl — essentially geology doing what it does best, which is making a complete mess of things very slowly.
The best time to visit is winter, when storms drive waves thundering into the bowl with a roar you feel in your chest. The surf churns, foams, swirls and boils in a way that’s both terrifying and completely magnificent.
The park is also a fine spot for whale watching. Gray Whales migrate between Alaska and Mexico roughly from December through to the end of April, and if you’re patient and the weather isn’t trying to kill you, there’s a decent chance of a sighting.
And don’t forget to explore the tidepools on the north side of the punch bowl — they’re brilliant, and the sort of thing that reminds you that nature was doing extraordinary things long before we showed up to take photographs of it.
🌊 The Devil’s Punchbowl: Timing Is Everything
We had done our homework before heading to the Devil’s Punchbowl — or at least we thought we had — and the first thing worth knowing is that this place operates entirely on its own schedule, and that schedule is the tide timetable.
At high tide, the Pacific Ocean pours through several natural openings in the Punchbowl’s rocky walls with a kind of furious, relentless energy that makes you very glad indeed to be standing on solid ground well above it. The water thrashes and surges against the basalt with genuine violence, which is spectacular to watch and absolutely not somewhere you want to be standing. The Devil’s Punchbowl is a collapsed sea cave on the Oregon Coast — formed over thousands of years as the relentless Pacific gradually hollowed out the rock from below — and what remains is essentially a great open-topped natural bowl, around 100 feet across, perched right at the water’s edge near the small town of Otter Rock, about 8 miles north of Newport. It has been a state natural area since 1932, which at least means someone put a car park in.
At low tide, however, the whole character of the place shifts entirely. The ocean retreats, the roaring calms to a distant grumble, and it becomes possible to walk inside the Punchbowl itself for a closer look at the geology, the tide pools, and whatever the sea has left behind. Which, frankly, is rather wonderful.
🥾 Getting Down There: A Word of Warning
On the north side of the Punchbowl there is a trail that takes you down to a small sandy beach below, and from there a path runs along to the mouth of the Punchbowl itself — past a series of slippery rocks and tide pools that require a reasonable degree of care and attention. We managed not to fall over, which we considered something of a personal triumph given the conditions.
We should mention — and we really do mean this — that the path down to the beach can be quite slippery. This is not one of those warnings that appears on a sign because some solicitor insisted on it. It is genuinely, properly slippery in places, particularly after rain, which on the Oregon Coast means basically always. Take your time, wear sensible footwear, and resist the temptation to look at your phone on the way down.
The tide pools themselves are worth the careful scramble. They are home to sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs, limpets, and the sort of small determined creatures that have been quietly getting on with life in rock pools since long before anyone thought to put a visitor information board nearby.
⚠️ Don’t Be a Hero: Check the Conditions First
Not every low tide is a safe opportunity to venture in, and this is where a fair number of people come unstuck. We would strongly advise against visiting during the winter months — roughly November through March — or during any period of stormy weather, when the surf can be considerably higher than usual and the whole situation becomes rather more hazardous than it looks from the car park.
The Oregon Coast is not the Mediterranean. It does not do calm and obliging. Even on a fine day in summer, rogue waves are a genuine possibility, and the rocks are unforgiving. Check the tide tables before you go, check the surf forecast, and if anything feels off when you get there, trust that instinct.
🚔 A Police Box in the Wild West
Well, we weren’t expecting that. Tucked away in the yard of a house right next to the car park for the State Park, there it was — a genuine British Police box, sitting there as bold as brass, completely out of context and utterly magnificent. We spotted it as we were faffing about looking for a parking space, and we did a proper double-take.
Now, for those of you who don’t know what a British Police box is — and given that we were standing in America, we had to accept that might include most people within a fifty-mile radius — let us explain. These sturdy little kiosks were a genuinely clever bit of Victorian and Edwardian civic thinking. The first ones appeared in the 1880s, though they became far more widespread and standardised from the 1920s onwards. The idea was straightforward enough: give police officers on the beat a dedicated place to file reports, make phone calls, store a first-aid kit, and — let’s be honest — probably shelter from the rain. Before walkie-talkies and mobile phones, they were actually rather essential bits of kit.
The Metropolitan Police in London had their own versions, but it was Glasgow, of all places, that ran one of the largest and most organised networks of Police boxes in the country. At one point, Glasgow had over three hundred of them scattered across the city. Edinburgh wasn’t far behind. Most were painted a rather fetching dark blue — though London’s were sometimes red, which nobody seems particularly proud of in retrospect.
Of course, for us lot — especially anyone of our generation who grew up glued to the telly on a Saturday afternoon — there is only one reason these boxes matter. And that reason has two hearts, a sonic screwdriver, and a frankly inexplicable ability to fit a spacecraft inside a telephone kiosk. Yes, Doctor Who. The BBC’s gloriously daft and utterly brilliant science-fiction series has been running since 23rd November 1963, when the very first episode, ‘An Unearthly Child’, aired the day after President Kennedy was assassinated — which, as you can imagine, somewhat overshadowed the launch. The BBC, undeterred, pressed on.
The Doctor’s spaceship, the TARDIS — which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, since you asked — takes the form of a 1960s Metropolitan Police box, because its chameleon circuit, designed to make it blend into any environment, got stuck. It has been stuck that way since 1963, which is either a charming plot device or the most convenient bit of set dressing in television history, depending on your level of cynicism.
So finding one of these things standing in an American yard, somewhere that almost certainly has never hosted a passing Time Lord, felt like a genuinely wonderful bit of luck. A little piece of home, plonked improbably in the middle of nowhere. We were absolutely delighted.
Planning Your visit the Devil’s Punchbowl?
🌊 Devils Punchbowl State Natural Area — Visitor Guide
Devils Punchbowl State Natural Area is one of the most dramatic and distinctive geological features on the Oregon Coast. A vast, roofless sea cave roughly 80 feet across, it was formed by the collapse of two ancient sea caves, their ceilings gradually eaten away by the relentless Pacific Ocean until they gave way entirely. What remains is a spectacular open-air rock bowl of sandstone and siltstone, where waves surge in through arched openings at the base, churning and foaming in a violent, swirling brew. It is a place that genuinely lives up to its name.
📍 Location
Devils Punchbowl sits within the small coastal community of Otter Rock, on the central Oregon Coast, roughly midway between Newport and Depoe Bay in Lincoln County. The park occupies a rocky headland that juts out into the Pacific, giving it sweeping ocean views in nearly every direction. Beverly Beach lies to the south, and the community of Otter Crest sits just to the north. The area is managed as a day-use state natural area by Oregon Parks and Recreation.
🚗 Getting There
The site is easily reached from Highway 101, the main coastal highway running the full length of the Oregon Coast. Look for the signed turn-off onto Otter Crest Loop Road — there are clear signs for Otter Rock and Devils Punchbowl. The loop road brings you down into the village and to the park itself.
If you are coming from Portland, the most direct route is to head west on Highway 26 to the coast, then south on Highway 101. From Eugene, take Highway 126 west to Newport, then head north on Highway 101. The drive from Portland takes around two hours; from Eugene, around an hour and a half.
There is no public transport directly serving Otter Rock, so a hire car is the practical choice for reaching the site. Driving is by far the most straightforward option.
🅿️ Getting Around
Once at the park, everything is explored on foot. There are three designated car parks serving the site and it is important to use only these — parking is not permitted on the surrounding residential streets. The local community is well aware of visitor parking habits and vehicles left on neighbourhood roads are likely to receive a ticket. If the car parks are full, it is worth coming back at a quieter time rather than attempting to park elsewhere.
From the main viewing area car park at the end of First Street, a short, paved trail (though partially eroded in places) leads down to the beach. Take care on this path as it can be slippery, particularly when wet.
To access the interior of the Punchbowl at low tide, walk north along C Avenue from the car park area. Past Third Street, a beach access trail descends on the left to Otter Crest Beach. From the beach, head south until you reach the rock arches that form the entry points into the bowl itself.
The north side of the headland is the most visited area and gives access to the tide pools, interesting boulder fields, and the Punchbowl entrance. The south side leads down to the northern end of Beverly Beach, popular with surfers. Surf equipment hire is available from Pura Vida Surf Shop, located in the car park area.
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