240 West 6th Street

Cedar shake cottage of 1925, on the corner of West Sixth and Laurel at the north end of Cannon Beach. The town was three years into its name when the house went up. The Post Office Department had struck Ecola off the local mail in 1922, having tired of confusing it with Eola in Polk County, and handed the community a name that was already secondhand: it came from a carronade off the U.S. schooner Shark, wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia on September 10, 1846, that washed ashore down the coast at what is now Arch Cape. Arch Cape gave the name up in 1912. Ecola picked it up ten years later. The lot here runs 4,791 square feet.

Two years after the cottage was framed, a dance hall was proposed for the top of Chapman Point, the forested headland that closes the sand a few streets north. John Yeon, seventeen at the time and a decade from designing the Watzek House in Portland, borrowed $4,500 against his life insurance policy and bought the point himself. He later conveyed it to the state. It is the John Yeon State Natural Site now, roughly fifteen acres of headland with nothing on it, which is why the view from this end of town ends in trees. Roosevelt elk graze the flats on both banks of Ecola Creek, mostly early and late, and the bulls call across it through September and October.

Wood floors, wainscoting, built-in shelving, and a Jøtul gas stove on the main level, under white shiplap and exposed wood ceilings. The kitchen is deep blue cabinetry with stainless appliances, and the dining nook is built in, opening to an open-air outdoor living room walled by fence and vine, which is unusual privacy for a coastal lot. Three bedrooms and two full baths with a powder room across 1,374 square feet: the primary sits under a vaulted ceiling, a mezzanine lounge sits above it, and a sleeping nook is built into the eaves with a skylight set over the bed.

Fig, apple, pear and plum trees are mature on the lot, with perennial flowers and culinary herbs planted between them. There is an outdoor shower walled in cedar, a private deck, a potting shed, and a raised front porch with a bench built into it. Chapman and Crescent beaches are a few streets west, and the trails into Ecola State Park begin at the same end of town.