USA/CA: Glass Beach at Fort Bragg
Glass Beach is an unusual attraction outside Fort Bragg – the gray sand beach here is abundant with small pieces of glass that have been washed over and out by the ocean, they look like tiny gemstone pebbles. The history of the Glass Beach is quite simple – way back on 1906, residents establish a dump site here and trashed all their junk including beer and milk bottles right near the beach. Twice the dump site had to be enlarged as more and more trash came in here, all the way until 1967. Over the next several decades, biodegradable trash disintegrated, metal stuff sank, and the pounding wave broke down the glass into small, smooth, colored jewelry-quality pieces. Hordes of people now come to the beach and collect the pieces and there’s hardly anything left. To be honest, the place is not worth coming to, but we were driving through anyway.
