[3] Westport is located on the Point Chehalis Peninsula, right on the entrace to Grays Harbor from the Pacific Ocean.

A summer-only passenger ferry, discontinued in 2008, previously connected the town to Ocean Shores, across the mouth of the harbor to the north.

The latter name is for a U.S. Army fort established in 1860 before the town was founded, "ts-a-lis" is the Lower Chehalis word for Westport, meaning "place of sand".

Measuring 53 feet (16.2 m), the structure is joined with the school, can hold 1,000 people, and is built to withstand a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake.

[6] A $15.2 million grant, with a 10% match by Westport,[6] was awarded from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the city in 2023 for the construction of a community tsunami evacuation tower that is scheduled to be ready in 2026.

Capable of also holding 1,000 people, the tower is planned to be part of a larger park complex near the town's marina and will stand around 50 feet (15.2 m) tall.

[5][7] With plans to add an additional three towers in the future, Westport also received a $2.0 million grant to complete a communications network that would continue to operate during a catastrophic event.

The area is generally mild and wet, with November through January having especially high levels of rainfall (averaging over 10 inches or 250 millimetres for each of those months) and little or no snow.

The Westport Marina is annually ranked as one the top commercial ports for fishing in the United States.

Westport once was home to a thriving logging community but cranberry farming has been a long-term, dependable component of the area's economy.

Due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, the city has created more business opportunities for tourism, including surfing and a focus on the local availability of seafood.