Qualla: Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron Clausen, CC BY-SA 4.0. A magician named it. Claude Alexander Conlin -- known professionally as 'Alexander the Man Who Knows,' one of the most famous mentalists of the early twentieth century -- had a home at Mora overlooking the beach in the 1920s. He named it Rialto, after the theater chain where he performed. The house burned in the 1930s and left no trace by 1967, but the name stuck, as theatrical names do, lending a touch of showmanship to a stretch of coast that needs none. Rialto Beach is its own spectacle: a wild expanse of Pacific shoreline within Olympic National Park where sea stacks rise from the surf, storm-deposited tree trunks form a graveyard of bleached driftwood, and the ocean has carved a rock arch called Hole-in-the-Wall that draws hikers along the cobblestone shore at low tide.

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Image: Ron Clausen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rialto Beach: The Magician's Beach

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Claude Alexander Conlin was no ordinary homeowner. Born in 1880, he became one of the most successful stage magicians and mentalists of his era, touring the vaudeville circuit and building a reputation for mind-reading acts that packed theaters across the country. His Rialto-chai...

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Image: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rialto Beach: A Graveyard of Giants

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Winter storms on the Olympic coast are events of genuine violence. Waves driven by Pacific gales slam into the shore, and the rivers running off the Olympic Mountains carry entire trees -- root balls and all -- into the ocean. Many of these trees wash back onto Rialto Beach, wher...

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Image: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rialto Beach: Hole-in-the-Wall

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ralph Arvesen from Round Mountain, Texas, CC BY 2.0. About a mile and a half north along the beach from the parking area, the coastline meets a rock headland that the Pacific has not been content to merely erode. Over centuries of surf and wave action, the ocean punched a hole clean through the rock, creating a natural arch wide en...

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Image: Ralph Arvesen from Round Mountain, Texas | CC BY 2.0

Rialto Beach: The Edge of the Park

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rialto Beach sits within Olympic National Park's coastal strip, accessible by road from the Mora area west of Forks. It is one of the most visited beaches on the Olympic Peninsula, yet it retains a quality of wildness that more accessible beaches surrender. There are no boardwalk...

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Image: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta | CC BY-SA 4.0