Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park

A historic Oregon coast state park where massive sand dunes meet freshwater lakes, featuring rustic CCC architecture and a sprawling campground.

Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park, situated three miles south of Florence along Oregon's coastal Highway 101, covers over 500 forested acres defined by a dramatic meeting of ancient sand dunes and dense coastal woodland. Originally established in 1930 as Woahink Lake State Park, the property was later renamed to honor Jessie M. Honeyman, the president of the Oregon Roadside Council and a dedicated advocate for preserving the state’s scenic highway corridors. The park's landscape is bisected by Highway 101, separating two major freshwater bodies: Cleawox Lake to the west and the larger, deeper Woahink Lake to the east. Between these lakes and the Pacific Ocean lies a two-mile-wide barrier of massive, shifting sand dunes that mark the northern gateway of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. These golden dunes rise directly from the edge of the forest, where old-growth Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and native rhododendrons crowd the shoreline.

The architectural heart of the park is its historic district, which showcases the meticulous handiwork of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Operating between 1935 and 1940, CCC crews transformed the site under the guidance of the National Park Service, utilizing a rustic design philosophy that prioritized local materials and integration with the natural environment. The crowning achievement of this effort is the Cleawox Lake Bathhouse, built in 1938 and designed by Bend architect J. Elwood Isted. Constructed from native stone and hand-hewn timbers, the T-shaped structure features peeled log rafters, hand-forged iron hardware, and a flagstone terrace leading to a small, sandy beach. Beyond the bathhouse, the CCC built three stone kitchen shelters, a caretaker's house and garage (which now serves as the park office), and miles of stone-curbed roadways and parking lots. During their tenure, the young laborers also cleared lake obstructions and planted over 40,000 native trees and shrubs to stabilize the surrounding sand.

Today, the park operates as the second-largest overnight campground in the Oregon State Parks system, offering a diverse array of accommodations and recreational access. The campground features 47 full-hookup RV sites, 121 electrical sites with water, 187 standard tent sites, and ten rustic yurts, alongside seasonal group camps and a hiker-biker camp. For off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, H Loop provides a dedicated staging area with direct trail access to the vast dune fields, open from October 1 through April 30. During the summer months, Cleawox Lake is a popular destination for swimming, canoeing, and paddleboarding, with rentals operating out of the historic bathhouse. On the eastern side of the highway, Woahink Lake features a public boat ramp that accommodates motorized boating, water skiing, and fishing for trout and bass. Visitors can explore a network of hiking trails that wind through the spruce forest, climb the sheer faces of the adjacent dunes for panoramic views of the coast, or gather wild huckleberries and blackberries when they ripen in the late summer.