Saturday, March 16, 2019

Glass Beach (Mendocino County, California)


For many years, I've heard of a beach in northern California with broken glass polished by the pounding ocean into a rainbow of colorful beads over the decades. Since I was going to be in the area for an event, I decided to get a couple of hikes in early this morning. Glass Beach, near Fort Bragg, was the first on the list. Luckily, my hotel is only half a mile or so away.

After arriving at the beach, I take some time to explore the area. As I understand it, the locals used this as a dump site for sixty years or so starting around the turn of the twentieth century. The lumber eventually rotted away, the rusted metallic scrap was later cleaned up, but the broken glass remained. The never-ending waves pounding on the shoreline and over years, rounded the sharp multi-colored pieces of glass into beads. Pictures I've seen in the past show a rainbow of colors, but as visitors by the thousands have collected and taken samples of the beads, the rich color spectrum has all but vanished. While many glass beads remain, most that remain are clear glass and less interesting. Still an interesting place to visit, but perhaps, I should have come here many years ago.

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