The entrance to Port Gamble - the bay - is marked by two spits. The one on the east is Point Julia and is actually a recurved spit or a cuspate foreland. The one on the west, below the town of Port Gamble, may have looked similar, but is now lost beneath the old Port Gamble mill site. I'll come back to that in my next post.
AERIAL VIEW
Point Julia lies on the lands of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe. It's a complicated feature due to the presence of a couple of small stream mouths, but the primary tidal marsh drains out through a narrow channel near the tip of the point. It looks like there's been some fill added to the old berm and marsh and it's possible this has influenced the plumbing a little, but unlike its counterpart across the channel to the west, this one still works!
Hugh: I have often wondered about these features. They just don't look natural! If they are natural how is it the sediment was deposited here?
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Fred Becker
The Port Gamble side has clearly been reconfigured by the old mill and Point Julia may have experienced a little modification, but I think the basic pair of landforms is natural and I think this supported by the old maps.
ReplyDeleteWhy they would have formed here is tough to comment on in a short space, but makes a fair amount of sense to me. Each probably has a slightly different geomorphic story, although they may have played off each other a little as well. Sometime on the back of a napkin ...