More than 40 years ago, few people could have predicted that a public landfill in California would become a world-famous glass beach.
Glass Beach is described by Canadian travel magazine The Travel as "one of the strangest attractions" in Fort Bragg, California. Instead of a typical sandy beach, Glass Beach, as its name suggests, is filled with colorful glass beads. These glass beads are not sharp, but are rounded like pebbles by the seawater. However, visitors are still reminded to wear shoes when coming here.
The beach is located in MacKerricher Park. The millions of glass beads that cover the beach are not naturally occurring. "It is nature's way of reclaiming a landfill, just as time and waves have repaired one of man's mistakes," commented Amusing Planet, a website specializing in reporting on unique destinations around the world.
In 1949, the area around the beach was a public dump. Fort Bragg residents dumped whatever household trash they could find on the cliffs above and the beach below. Some of the most common trash left behind was glass, plastic, and even cars. In the early 1960s, local authorities began to make efforts to control the dumping of hazardous materials on the beach. In 1967, the North Coast Water Quality Commission realized the mistake of allowing people to dump their trash there and decided to close Glass Beach.
Over the past 40 years, nature has reclaimed the beach. Waves have washed the beach clean, grinding away the discarded glass into the small, smooth, brightly colored pebbles that visitors see today. Occasionally, visitors will see a reminder of the site’s past as a landfill, such as a rusted spark plug. But for the most part, what you see are millions of pieces of glass sparkling in the sun, shining like crystal.
The area is frequented by tourists, who, despite not being allowed to do so, still roam the beach, trying to steal the beautiful pieces of sea glass to take home as souvenirs. Today, local officials are concerned that the glass will be eroded and lost due to tourists’ furtive picking. In many discussions, the idea of adding more sea glass to the beach has been raised, but these proposals have often been rejected.
There is no charge to visit the beach, but the parking lot, built in 2017, only holds about 20 cars. If you want to see the glassy shore, you should come before high tide, or after low tide.
In addition to visiting the beach, visitors have many other destinations and activities to enjoy in Fort Bragg. One of them is to visit MacKerricher Park, which has beaches, sand dunes, headlands, coves, wetlands, forests, and freshwater lakes. The park is also a popular location for hiking, biking, and whale watching. If you want to camp, you can camp near the fishing facility on Cleone Lake.
Visitors can also take a tour of the historic Skunk Railway, which was built in 1885 to transport lumber and transport families living in the area. Visit the Skunk Train website and book your ticket to ride the Skunk Train, which travels along the century-old track. Many have described the trip as “a trip back in time.”
According to vnexpress.net
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