The Long Way
Pacific County
A historic photograph showing people gathered around a giant frying pan.
Plate I. Cooking clams, World's Largest Frying Pan. From lewisandclark.travel
Black and white photograph of a large crowd and cooking setup at a festival.
Plate II. Clam Festival cooking, World's Largest Frying Pan. From evergreencoastwa.com
Historic photo of people posing with a giant frying pan on a truck.
Plate III. Historical photo of World's Largest Frying Pan. From lewisandclark.travel
A street view of a weathered shingled building with a giant frying pan sculpture outside.
Plate IV. World's Largest Frying Pan, Long Beach. Photograph by Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

World's Largest Frying Pan

Long Beach, Pacific County, Washington. Roadside oddity.

Details

Map. Long Beach, Pacific County, Washington. Larger map
Where
408 Pacific Ave S, Long Beach, WA 98631. Directions
When
Free to visit and photograph at any time of day.
Getting there
On the corner of 5th Street and Pacific Avenue, Long Beach has the World's Largest Frying Pan and the World's Largest Spitting Clam.
Fees
free to visit and photograph at any time of day.
Walk-in or reserve
None needed; free to visit and photograph at any time of day.
Website
evergreencoastwa.com
Managed by
Pacific County Tourism Bureau.
Established
1941.
Coordinates
46.349, -124.0543.

This roadside attraction is free to visit and photograph at any time of day.

Notable Events

  1. 1940Long Beach organized the first of many Clam Festivals in 1940; thousands dug clams and sampled the world's largest clam fritter made in the world's largest fry pan, borrowed from the city of Chehalis. historylink.org
  2. 1940The first festival in 1940 loaned a giant pan with such success that Long Beach committed their own 14-foot-tall pan in 1941. lewisandclark.travel
  3. 1941Chef Wellington W. Marsh made the giant fritter of 200 pounds of clams; it took a few helping hands, two garden hoes, and four two-foot by two-foot spatulas. evergreencoastwa.com
  4. 1941Northwest Copper and Sheet Metal Works created the giant frying pan in Portland in 1941; the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce commissioned it to help promote the first annual Clam Festival. evergreencoastwa.com
  5. 1941Festival coordinators used this pan from 1941-1948 to cook giant clam fritters for attendees. lewisandclark.travel
  6. 1948In 1948, the pan went on a tour of Washington State on the back of a dairy truck to promote the festival. lewisandclark.travel
  7. 1952To advertise the clam fest, they took the giant frying pan on tour throughout the Pacific Northwest; it even made it all the way to Los Angeles in 1952. evergreencoastwa.com
  8. 1994The pan was restored in 1994 and now serves as a roadside attraction. lewisandclark.travel
  9. The year after the first fritter, 20,000 people showed up to eat the nine-foot clam fritter cooked in the frying pan. evergreencoastwa.com

People

  • Everett L. Mosher, local retired fisherman who saved the pan from becoming scrap metal.
  • Wellington W. Marsh, Long Beach chef who made the world's largest clam fritter in the giant fry pan (1895-1977).

Sources

  1. lewisandclark.travel/listing/worlds-largest-frying-pan
  2. evergreencoastwa.com/giant-frying-pan
  3. historylink.org/file/9596