The Fourth of July trash bags are gone from the Little Beach entrance. The Ridge Path is dry. In the next three weeks the town is pointing at two specific dates, and if you live here it is worth knowing which ones and why.
Both are nights, not days. One is inside the little red schoolhouse at 656 A Street. The other is outside, on a dune stretch you can reach on foot from any numbered-street access. Neither is engineered for visitors from out of the county, which is part of what makes them work.
The schoolhouse turns seventy-five on a Saturday afternoon
On Saturday, August 1, the Trail's End Art Association opens its 75th Annual Judged Show. The opening reception runs from 1 p.m., the awards ceremony at 3 p.m. announces winners in each category plus Best in Show and the Mayor's Award, and the whole thing bleeds into the Gearhart ArtWalk from 2 to 5 p.m. The Astoria Ukulele Orchestra is playing. Lemonade, wine, and chocolate are on the table.
The show is the only exhibit at Trail's End that opens to non-member artists, which is why it draws submissions from across the Northwest and why the room on opening afternoon is denser than any other month. It stays up through August 30 with summer hours Thursday through Monday, so if the reception itself is not your speed there are four full weeks to slip in on a quiet Friday.
The number seventy-five is the point. The club is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, housed in a former schoolhouse built around 1903 and moved to its location after fires in 1913 to 1915 destroyed many of the buildings in downtown Gearhart. The association bought the building in 1952 for two rooms, one studio and one gallery, and has kept it in continuous use since.
"This is a big year for exposure for us," said Linda Gebhart, chair of celebration events. "We want people to know who we are."
That last part is the interesting admission. TEAA sits in plain view on A Street, and Gebhart's observation that many people who live in Gearhart still do not know it is there is probably the most honest thing anyone has said about the gallery all year. August 1 is the correction.
Why the meteors will actually be visible here
Eleven nights after the opening reception, on the night of Wednesday, August 12 into the predawn of Thursday, August 13, the Perseid meteor shower peaks. In most years that would be a footnote. This year it is not, because the new moon lands the same day. A dark sky and a peak shower on the same rotation is a coincidence that happens rarely enough to plan around.
Gearhart is unusually well set up for this. The town does not run beach lighting. Seaside has an agreement with the State of Oregon to maintain its beach with a tractor rake; Gearhart does not, and expanding into that kind of beach-maintenance operation would be a new line of business the city has not taken on. The absence of tractor tracks and floodlights is why the dunes past the Highlands Lane access read as genuinely dark. Walk five minutes north of any of the numbered-street entrances, let your eyes adjust for a full fifteen, and the ambient glow drops off in a way that Seaside two miles south cannot match.
The practical version: bring a blanket, bring a layer heavier than you think you need because the marine air after midnight sits in the low fifties, and check the tide before you commit to a spot on the wet sand. High tide the morning of August 13 will pull the waterline in well before dawn. If you are watching from the dry sand between Pacific Way and the 10th Street entrance, you do not have to think about it. If you walk further north you should.
If the sky closes in, the Perseids run for several nights on either side of the peak. The moon phase is only ideal on the twelfth into the thirteenth, but a night or two on either side is still workable.
What fills the space between the two nights
The eleven days between the reception and the meteor peak are not empty. The town holds its usual summer rhythm, which if you have lived here for more than one season you already know but may not have looked at all at once:
- The Tuesday Farmer's Market on Pacific Way
- Thursday Buskers Concerts
- Movies in the Park after dusk
- Tufted Puffin Walks led out along the beach
- The 2026 Gearhart Summer Championship at Gearhart Golf Links, a stroke-play tournament recently re-introduced and dating back to 1910
The championship is the one worth flagging even if you do not play. The course itself is worth knowing about as a piece of the town's context: the front nine opened in 1892, which makes it the oldest course in the Pacific Northwest and, depending on who is counting, the oldest west of the Mississippi, with the back nine added in 1913 and a 2013 restoration that removed hundreds of trees and added eleven tees to bring the course closer to its original links character. The Sand Trap Pub in the McMenamins-run clubhouse is a reasonable place to watch the last groups come in on championship Sunday even if the tournament is not your reason for being there.
Trail's End also runs a First Saturday ArtWalk every month, which is why August 1 is both the judged show reception and the regular ArtWalk loop through downtown studios. It is the same event doubled, not two things stacked.
A quieter thread running underneath all of this
Something worth knowing if you were not at the last council meeting: the public safety building question is not going away. City Manager Chad Sweet gave a history of the fire station project at the July meeting, noting the project is frustrating for many and expensive for all given state mandates, geotech realities, and Gearhart's small size in terms of operating budget and tax base. Of the current projected $34 million to rebuild on the existing site, $9 million alone is for foundation work. Gearhart's total annual operating budget is $2.9 million per year.
Those figures are the reason the topic keeps coming back. A $34 million capital project against a $2.9 million operating budget is a ratio that does not resolve on its own, and a decision on whether to place a funding measure on the November ballot is expected in the coming weeks. If you own a home in Gearhart, this is the summer to actually read the survey when it arrives.
One small piece of housekeeping
Beach fires are still allowed on Gearhart Beach, but Gearhart Fire enforces the rules more strictly than most visitors expect. If you are hosting anyone from out of town for the meteor night and they want to build a fire while they watch, walk them through the rules ahead of time rather than after. Fires and dark-sky viewing also do not really coexist inside the same fifty-foot radius; a fire further down the beach from your blanket is the workable compromise.
The other small thing: the Trail's End Free Little Art Gallery, tucked at the schoolhouse, is worth a stop with kids on the ArtWalk. It works on the same trade-a-piece principle as the little free libraries scattered around town. Bring something, take something, and the eight-year-olds are occupied for twenty minutes while you look at the judged show.
What actually links these two nights
Both of them work because of what Gearhart has chosen not to become. The town does not maintain the beach with heavy equipment, does not run boardwalk lighting, does not host the kind of large-scale summer event that would require crowd management, and does not have a fire station rebuild funded yet. Those absences are the same reason the dunes are dark enough to see a meteor shower and the reason the 75th Annual Judged Show fits comfortably inside a room that used to be a schoolhouse. The calendar in this town rewards residents who know where to stand and when.
If you are thinking about what a house on the north side of Pacific Way is worth this summer, or whether the market has softened enough to move on the cottage you have been watching, the answer is more specific than any portal will tell you. When you are ready to talk through it, Cindy Hawkins Colley has been paying attention to this stretch of coast for twenty-eight years. Let's Connect.
