For travelers to Cannon Beach from Portland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the journey west meant more than an hour and a half’s drive over the Coast Range Mountains.

Before highways, tunnels and bridges, coffee stops and gas stations, boats ferried passengers down the Columbia River to Astoria, where they met smaller craft to continue along the Skipanon River and ride on horseback to Seaside.

Even after the arrival of a railroad cut down travel times in the 1890s, travelers still faced a long journey from Seaside, as the winding Ecola Toll Road took 111 hairpin turns over Tillamook Head to Cannon Beach.

But “Places by the Sea,” a traveling exhibit from the Oregon Historical Society on view at the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum through Dec. 31, shows that even so, it and other coastal villages emerged both as popular destinations and places to seek solitude.

“A trip down here would have been pretty much an all-day trek,” said Zoe “Fish” Swain, an outreach specialist at the museum. “People would come down and they would rent these tiny little cabins all summer, and they would just play on the beach, fly kites and dig in the sand.”

Many would forage for crabs or shellfish, swim in the ocean or take walks on the beach, she said.

The exhibit, which opened Dec. 10, illustrates those and other ways travelers might have spent their time. Photographs from 1906 to 1920, originally commissioned by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, show vacationers clamming, swimming and strolling boardwalks.

Simple pastimes that endure on the coast today.

“People love looking at old photos of places where they go every summer, or they live, and just seeing what it looked like,” Swain said. “It’s just wild when you get to see pictures of a place so many years ago.”

Also featured in the exhibit are a series of postcards, and a map that outlines the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway route “through the heart of the Cascade Mountains along the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean.”

“Places by the Sea” has also been shown at the Portland International Airport, Garibaldi Maritime Museum and Independence Heritage Museum.

The museum on Spruce Street in Cannon Beach plans to hold special hours for the exhibit from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, except Sundays, through December. Admission is by donation.

When asked what she hopes viewers will take away from it, Swain concluded that through different eras, the essential appeal of Cannon Beach has, in some ways, remained the same.

“Even though we are in the tech era, we have all these nicer restaurants and we have new amenities, we’re still a small and simple town, and this is still a beautiful and relaxing place to come and enjoy,” Swain said.

“In so many ways, it’s exactly the same. We’ve kept things small, we’ve kept things simple, and that’s how it should be.”

‘Places by the Sea’

A traveling exhibit from the Oregon Historical Society

On view at the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum, 1387 Spruce St., through Dec. 31

Hours are from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, except Sundays. Admission is by donation.