The Pacific Northwest has five well-established nude beaches within an hour of a major city: Collins Beach and Rooster Rock near Portland, Denny Blaine and Howell Park in Seattle, and Wreck Beach in Vancouver. All five are legal or tolerated, which is rarer than it sounds on the US West Coast, and all five come with cold water, long summers and a regular crowd that has been going for decades.
Oregon: the law first
Oregon's public indecency law, ORS 163.465, makes it a crime to expose the genitals in or in view of a public place with the intent of arousing the sexual desire of yourself or another person. Nudity without that intent is not covered, which is why Portland's police bureau has stated that being naked in public in Portland is legal within the statute's guidelines, and why the World Naked Bike Ride rolls through the city every June. Municipalities can adopt stricter codes, and some have, so this is a state-level fact and not a license to undress in every town. Oregon has two officially designated clothing-optional beaches, both listed under Oregon nude beaches.
Collins Beach, Sauvie Island
Collins Beach is on the Columbia River side of Sauvie Island, inside the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, roughly 30 minutes from downtown Portland. The clothing-optional section is the northern stretch of beach reached from the parking areas along Reeder Road; ODFW's own area map asks users to stay inside the posted boundaries so the privilege is not lost, which is a precise description of the situation. A dispute with neighboring landowners in 2001 ended with a county judge ordering signs, a brochure and policing of the boundary, and the beach has been stable since. You need an ODFW parking permit, sold at the island's general store and online, and the walk from the lot through the trees to the sand is short. It is the friendliest of the Oregon beaches for a first visit, with families, couples and singles in roughly the proportions you would see at any Oregon lake.
Rooster Rock State Park
Rooster Rock, 22 miles east of Portland on I-84 in the Columbia River Gorge, is often described as the first officially designated clothing-optional beach in the United States. The nude section is the eastern beach, reached by a path from the far end of the parking lot and separated from the main park by distance and trees; Oregon State Parks has said the two areas are not visible to each other. The rule restricting nudity to the beach east of the easternmost access steps dates to 1979. The beach only exists when the Columbia is low, so it is a July to September beach, and it is one of the few places anywhere you can sunbathe nude with a basalt monolith and a view of the Gorge. The park charges a day-use fee.
Washington: Seattle's two city beaches
Washington's indecent exposure statute, RCW 9A.88.010, requires an open and obscene exposure that the person knows is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm. Seattle has no city ordinance against simple nudity, and the city treats nude sunbathing as lawful unless it crosses into lewd conduct, which is the basis on which both of its lakeside nude beaches have survived.
Denny Blaine Park
Denny Blaine is a two-acre park on Lake Washington in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood, with a lawn, a small sandy beach and a long history of nude use that includes police citations in 1988 and a 2023 proposal for a playground beside the beach that was withdrawn after public opposition. In 2024 a group of neighbors sued the city to end nudity there. In July 2026 a King County Superior Court judge ruled that nudity on the lower beach and toplessness throughout the park are lawful and that closing the park would not be an appropriate remedy, while ordering Seattle to adopt a park-specific code of conduct and add staffing, landscaping buffers and controls on overcrowding and prohibited behavior. Expect those changes to be visible on the ground, and expect the regulars, who are organized as Friends of Denny Blaine, to be watching how they are applied. The crowd is young, mixed and heavily LGBTQ, parking is on residential streets, and there are no facilities.
Howell Park
A few blocks south, Howell Park is a smaller, quieter beach reached by a footpath from 36th Avenue East in Madrona. It has been nude-friendly for as long as Denny Blaine, draws a mostly male crowd, and has none of the publicity. No facilities, no parking lot, and the same legal footing. Both Seattle beaches appear under Washington nude beaches.
British Columbia: Wreck Beach
Canada's Criminal Code, section 174, makes nudity in a public place an offense, but prosecution requires the consent of the provincial Attorney General, and that consent has not been sought for beaches that authorities have chosen to recognize. Wreck Beach is the clearest example in the country: the Greater Vancouver Regional District recognized it as clothing-optional in 1991, it lies within Pacific Spirit Regional Park under Metro Vancouver, and the Federation of Canadian Naturists counts it as one of Canada's two officially designated clothing-optional beaches (Hanlan's Point in Toronto is the other).
The beach sits below the cliffs at the western tip of the University of British Columbia campus. The main access is Trail 6, a stairway of several hundred steps down (and, more memorably, up), with Trails 4 and 7 as quieter alternatives. The clothing-optional foreshore is signposted and runs for several kilometers from Acadia Beach in the north around to the Fraser River, though the social center is the sand at the bottom of Trail 6, where vendors sell food and drink in summer. Wreck is the biggest and liveliest nude beach in the region, with a summer weekend crowd in the thousands, a long-running preservation society, and a louder, younger feel than any of the Oregon beaches. Regulars have complained for years about gawkers and parties at the north end; keep clothed visitors with cameras out of your plans. The beach is listed under British Columbia nude beaches, and the BC member directory is where the Vancouver regulars are.
What the five have in common
- Cold water. The Columbia, Lake Washington and the Strait of Georgia are all cold in July. Nobody swims long.
- No lifeguards, few facilities. Bring water, sunscreen and a bag for your rubbish. Rooster Rock has restrooms at the main lot; the others range from pit toilets to nothing.
- Boundaries matter. Every one of these beaches has a line, posted or customary, beyond which nudity is not tolerated. Learn where it is. These beaches survive on good behavior at the edges.
- Etiquette is enforced socially. The beach etiquette guide applies in full, and the Wreck Beach regulars in particular are not shy about saying so.
To meet people before you go, the Oregon and Washington member pages and the regional groups list the beach days, and the events calendar carries the summer meetups. For other West Coast beaches, start with California.