The park offers a crescent shaped beach, tide pools, hiking trails and a year-round campground.

[3] The park is one of three along the Cape Arago Highway, which runs along the Pacific Ocean west of U.S. Route 101.

[2] Sunset Bay is home to one of Oregon's ghost forests, created by an earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone that dropped the shoreline about 1,200 years ago.

Located on the Oregon Coast, Sunset Bay State Park has a mild oceanic climate (Cfb), with minimal temperature variation throughout the year.

As is typical of coastal locations in Oregon, Sunset Bay is very wet, with nearly 65 inches (1,700 mm) of annual precipitation, the vast majority of it falling between the months of October and May.