LONG BEACH, Wash. —

I knew that southwestern Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula was a great place to find oysters. The shellfish grown in the pure waters of Willapa Bay are acknowledged as among the best in the world.

I also knew this was a perfect place to harvest cranberries. The Long Beach bogs are treasured by the Ocean Spray company as a primary source of the healthy red berries, used in everything from juices to sauces to dried snacks.

But mushrooms, too? Be still my heart!

{%TravLongBeach-p08 112314%} In fact, the long, narrow Long Beach Peninsula — 112 miles northwest of Portland, 15 miles from Astoria — is one of the richest troves of culinary treasures to be found in the Pacific Northwest, and that’s saying a lot in this region so proud of its farm-to-table ethic.

My mid-October visit came at the perfect time to enjoy the best of the bounty. I arrived at Long Beach (composed of a series of small towns that extend 17 miles north from Ilwaco to Oysterville) just after the start of the six-week Wild Mushroom Celebration. Cranberries were in full harvest mode, the oyster season was just kicking in, and razor clams were surrendering to diggers who found them spouting in the beach sands.

The many fine restaurants along this stretch of coastline were serving the bounty as fresh as could be, from mushroom cakes with huckleberry sauce at Pickled Fish to pan-fried oysters at Jimella & Nanci’s Market Cafe.

But perhaps the best thing about the Long Beach Peninsula is this: It’s not just about the food. I happened to visit on the weekend of the annual Water Music Festival, whose highlights included a concert by acoustic performers Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel at the 19th-century Oysterville church, and a Saturday night tasting dinner and operatic performance at the lavish Leadbetter Farms lighthouse.

History is alive and well, not only in Oysterville, but also at Cape Disappointment State Park, an integral part of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. Artists’ studios and galleries may be found up and down the peninsula, especially in the colorful heart of the town of Long Beach — located north of Ilwaco and Seaview, south of Klipsan Beach and Ocean Park.

Most of all, this is a place for family fun. The hard-packed sands of Long Beach lay claim to being the “world’s longest beach.”

{%TravLongBeach-p01 112314%} In fact, at 28 miles, it is merely the longest beach on the West Coast of the United States. But that’s more than enough to please those who enjoy beach driving or horseback riding, to satisfy hikers and bicyclists who tackle the 8.2-mile Discovery Trail, and to excite kite enthusiasts, especially those who participate each August in the Washington State International Kite Festival.

Hotel dining

First things first, however. Where does one stay, dine and imbibe on the Long Beach Peninsula?

On my most recent visit, I lodged at the Adrift Hotel, hard by the beach and a short walk to the heart of the commercial district. Industrial chic, reflective of the popular Ace Hotels in Portland and Seattle, this seaside property offered me a minimally decorated but perfectly maintained room for a very moderate price. Like in Portland, it incorporates an outstanding restaurant-lounge, Pickled Fish.

I enjoyed a frisee salad (with fried oysters) and the wild mushroom cakes, accompanied by a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc, while listening to live music from a Portland alternative-rock band.

{%TravLongBeach-p04 112314%} I had stayed at Susie Goldsmith and Bill Verner’s lovely, backstreet Boreas Bed & Breakfast Inn on a previous visit to Long Beach. The genial couple invited me to return for a six-course, wild-mushroom Sunday brunch, surprising me by inviting another guest — area mushroom expert Veronica Williams, a professional forager who has written two books on the subject.

As we dined on Verner’s rich and creamy mushroom omelet, Williams told me how to safely identify 16 different edible varieties of mushrooms found on the peninsula, including the abundant slippery jack, with which I was not familiar.

Several of my favorite coastal restaurants are in the community of Seaview, just south of Long Beach surrounding the junction of state Route 103, which extends the length of the peninsula, and spur U.S. Highway 101 from Astoria. A longtime classic is the Shelburne Inn, established in 1896 and in operation since. The 14 antique-furnished guest rooms are lovely, but the Shelburne is better known for its intimate pub and restaurant, which serves the finest mussel chowder I have ever had.

{%TravLongBeach-p06 112314%} More great eats

On this visit, however, I spent an evening with chef-owner Michael Lalewicz at The Depot Restaurant, built as a railway station in 1905. Although I had arrived three weeks too early for The Depot’s annual “Lewis & Clark Wild Game Dinner” (featuring duck-and-rabbit terrine, elk stew, pheasant breast and an apple tart with cranberry chutney), I was in the right place for pan-fried Willapa Bay oysters and duck marsala with cranberry-hazelnut wild-rice pilaf.

Nearby, at Blaine Walker’s 42nd Street Cafe & Bistro, the evening wild-mushroom specials extended from salads (mixed greens with shaved fresh matsutakes and chanterelles and a shiitake vinaigrette) to entrees (ravioli in a boletus reduction or steak with morel gravy) and even to desserts (French cream with blood orange, cinnamon and chanterelle reduction). I had a bit of them all in a three-egg vegetarian breakfast scramble, with the king boletes a standout.

At the north end of the peninsula, Jimella Lucas and Nanci Main made The Ark Restaurant & Bakery, on the Nahcotta wharf, a destination for Portlanders and Seattleites for 22 years.

Even famed restaurateurs James Beard and Alice Waters sang its praises. When Lucas and Main closed the restaurant in 2004 (now abandoned, sadly, the building has become a haven for feral cats), the couple moved to a new establishment on the highway in Ocean Park.

Although Lucas died a year ago, Jimella & Nanci’s Market Cafe today continues to serve the same delicious bouillabaisse and seafood-friendly menu as always.

Between Long Beach and Seaview, the Australian-flavored Lost Roo is a spacious sports pub with a menu that gives nods to vegetarian diners (it offers a garlic-roasted portabello mushroom burger) and to Columbia River steelhead lovers. Its steamer clams are steamed in Leadbetter Red Jetty Scottish Ale, brewed down the road at the North Jetty Brewing & Tap Room, owned by Erik and Michelle Svendsen. Michelle grew up in Bend.

Finding the food

That the Long Beach Peninsula takes food seriously is evident in its centerpiece: a giant razor clam and a frying pan that is 8 feet in diameter and weighs 500 pounds.

{%TravLongBeach-p10 112314%} The two stand side-by-side in a small park in the heart of Long Beach town. The 10-foot clam spouts hourly, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and if visitors want to encourage it to do so at an odd hour, they can deposit a quarter in a coin box.

Clams pretty much stay hidden (except during the peninsula’s annual Razor Clam Festival in April), but oysters are easy to find any time of year. Visitors can merely jog east on Route 103 at Ocean Park, soon reaching the shore of Willapa Bay. An oyster fleet anchors at the Nahcotta Wharf, where the seasonal Willapa Bay Interpretive Center stands just past the remnants of the old Ark restaurant.

And the Oysterville Sea Farms are happy to provide year-round, one-on-one education at their weather-beaten headquarters beside the mudflats.

{%TravLongBeach-p11 112314%} Three to five miles north of Oysterville, Leadbetter Point State Park spans the tip of the peninsula from bay to breakers, with easy trails extending north into Willapa National Wildlife Refuge and west through the sometimes dense pine-and-spruce forests between. It is here that local mushroom foragers are most active, where the nearly ubiquitous slippery jacks draw attention from the hefty king boletes and the tasty matsutakes. On a brief hike, I met several family groups “shopping” for ingredients for their evening meals.

{%TravLongBeach-p12 112314%} The largest cranberry bogs are in the southern part of the peninsula, near Long Beach and Ilwaco. I was fortunate to find a crew of workers at Malcolm and Ardell McPhail’s CranMac Farms on Sandridge Road. I watched as they gathered berries from bogs that had been flooded and worked over with machinery to release the fruit from the dense, low vines. As the berries rose to the surface, the ponds turned crimson. Laborers tightened a boom around the fruit as they raked the berries toward a conveyor belt, upon which they were lifted and dropped into storage crates.

To learn more about cranberries, I headed north to the Cranberry Museum and Demonstration Farm at the Washington State University Cranberry Research Station. Historical photographs and antique harvesting equipment helped tell the story of this delicious fruit, which has been harvested in Long Beach since 1881. According to museum exhibits, Washington is the fifth-largest producer of cranberries in the United States.

{%TravLongBeach-p13 112314%} Other attractions

One of my favorite remote corners of the Long Beach Peninsula is the village of Oysterville, which feels more like a Maine coastal community than something on the Pacific Northwest coast. Founded in 1854, it retains its 19th-century flavor. Through the 1870s, Oysterville was home to several hundred settlers, who shipped bushels of native oysters on schooners to San Francisco. Wealthy miners were happy to trade gold — and redwood timber for home building — for the tiny treasures. But without a convenient rail connection, the population dwindled, and by 1920, most homes had been abandoned.

Oysterville was designated a National Historic District in 1976. Nine homes built between 1863 and 1878 were specifically acknowledged, along with the 1892 Oysterville Church, the 1907 schoolhouse and the 1919 Oysterville Store & Post Office. Walking-tour maps are dispensed today at the little church, even though no formal services have been held there since the 1930s.

{%TravLongBeach-p14 112314%} The peninsula’s other important historical attraction is at its southern end. Cape Disappointment State Park, formerly known as Fort Canby, offers camping, hiking, fishing and other recreation. More significant, perhaps, it is home to two lighthouses and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, which sits on a cliff overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River.

Exhibits and a theater shed light on the explorers’ 1805-06 winter visit, including William Clark’s 8-mile trek northward along the coast. (That path is traced by the 8.2-mile Discovery Trail, combining boardwalks with a paved route and featuring several monuments.)

Also an official site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the Columbia Pacific Ilwaco Heritage Museum showcases artifacts from the seminal North American expedition, as well as memories of early native and white settlement. It stands close to the 800-slip Ilwaco Harbor, whose marina community includes cafes, markets, galleries, charter fishing and a Saturday market in summer.

{%TravLongBeach-p16 112314%} Back in the town of Long Beach, with its “longest beach,” family attractions run the gamut from go-karts to laser tag, zip lines to minigolf and bicycle rentals. The town also is home to the World Kite Museum, a highlight of which is a private collection of Asian kites — Japanese, Chinese, Malay and others — along with videos of international kite-fighting tournaments.

And then there’s Jake the Alligator Man, who makes his home at Marsh’s Free Museum. This novelty shop has no shortage of bizarre attractions, ranging from a two-headed calf to nickel peep shows, but it’s Jake that people come to see. A mummified, black-skinned dwarf with the body of a gator from the shoulders down, Jake “lives” is a terrariumlike container.

As far as I’m concerned, Jake is fine right there. Keep him away from the oysters and cranberries and mushrooms.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com