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Bombay Beach isn't really much of a beach anymore. Or a beach community. But for someone who collects beaches, it was well worth a couple of hours exploring before heading up to Joshua Tree.
AERIAL VIEW
In the first half of the 20th century, the Salton Sea was a pretty popular spot. Speed boat racers and water skiers flocked to its shores. Celebrities showed up. Developers saw opportunities. In the 1950s, several waterfront communities were thriving. I guess it offered all the benefits of Palm Springs, but it also had beaches, a big lake, and place for your boat.
There's a nice history at:
San Diego Union-Tribune (2015)
I've also posted more photos on the Tumblr blogs listed on the top right of this page.
But the water that flows into the lake was salty and toxic (besides a lot of desert, the watershed consists primarily of abundantly irrigated and chemically treated farmland) and the water started smelling and the fish and the birds started dying. To make matters worse, lake levels varied and some communities, like this one, were threatened by flooding so dikes had to be built. Living here just stopped making much sense -- although some people still do.
The 20th-century archeology of the Salton Sea's shoreline has become a bit of a draw in itself - it's the subject of documentaries, post-apocalyptic film shoots, and "disaster tourism."
This is a pretty bleak beach on which to end 2018!
2019 will see some big changes in my life, but I don't expect the beach collecting to stop.
The Salton Sea is a big, salty lake and occupies a broad low spot in the bottom of the Imperial Valley. The lake surface is currently around 237' below sea level and the bottom of the lake is almost as deep as Badwater Basin in Death Valley. Like Death Valley and the Great Salt Lake and the Humboldt Sink, this is an internal drainage - water flows in but does not flow out. It just evaporates very slowly, leaving mud and salt behind.
The current lake was a bit of an accident, since it formed in 1905 when an irrigation canal went wrong and allowed the Colorado River to flow in. On the other hand, the Colorado had apparently been doing this on its own every few hundred years long before that (perhaps aided by movement during large earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault, which runs along the east side of the valley), so the lake itself has plenty of precedent.
AERIAL VIEW
Much of the shoreline is salt and mud, but there are also small shells and lots of fish parts. Which form a sufficiently granular substrate that waves can turn them into something interesting. Here, at the jettied mouth of this small harbor/estuary(?) waves have formed a nice little beach with diverging spits. There were multiple scarps and beach berms, reflecting slightly different water levels and slightly different wave regimes, along with washover fans where larger waves had carried shells over into the lagoon.
In putting together this post, I discovered another blog - Salton Sea Walk - which provided a lot more background on the lake's beaches. It confirmed my suspicion that the shells are probably small, thin-shelled barnacles, but apparently, they are far more abundant on other parts of the lake and a major beach-forming material. Maybe next trip...
Farther up the "beach" there were some faint beach ridges, recording higher levels of the gradually retreating lake (more rapidly in recent dry years).
Strand Beach (Strands Beach, in some descrriptions) is located just north of Dana Point. It was largely undeveloped until the early 2000s, when a large high-end subdivision began to be built. There's a Ritz Carlton on the high bluff to the north and a cluster of homes perched high above the beach on the south end. Much of the headland of Dana Point itself is maintained as a Preserve.
AERIAL VIEW
I suppose the beach owes some of its character to Dana Point itself, which influences both the shape of this coastline and the southward movement of sediment. The back of the beach is largely buried under the riprap revetment, which sort of limits the use of this beach to lower tides.
As with many other developments in California, there has been a long battle over public access on this site. A trail has been built along the top of the revetment (which allows people to walk where there was once a beach) and there are several public pathways that provide access from the public park at the top of the bluff.
Aliso Beach, like Main Beach to the north, is a little longer and wider than most other beaches along this shoreline. It benefits from having formed in the vicinity of a stream mouth where the bluffs are set back farther and there's more sand to build the beach.
AERIAL VIEW
There was a significant scarp running the length of the upper beach. These cuts form when wave action lowers the beach profile - pulling the sand offshore. They are typically associated with big storms, but are often most pronounced when either nature, or humans, have created a particularly high back beach. I don't know much about the recent history here, but will assume this reflects natural processes -- although I suppose the beach could have been nourished. The lower beach also had large, distinct cusps, with a coarse gravelly lag in the hollows.
I guess there are plans to restore the estuary at the mouth of Aliso Creek. I suppose there aren't many places to do this along here - the topography, the lack of significant streams, and the dense development all conspire against the formation and maintenance of estuaries.
I often refer to this blog as my beach collection. Right now, you're in the Orange County Gallery. But you're almost at the end (but not quite). The next room, The Salton Sea Gallery, is small, but will be very different than this one and will leave you with some contrasting views of both geology and coastal development.
AERIAL VIEW
Wood's Cove is another of these wonderful little pocket-like beaches that seem to define Laguna Beach. At the bottom of Diamond Street, there is a short path and a tall flight of stairs to the rocks at the bottom. Small beaches extend in both directions, flanked by large homes perched on the edge of the bluff. And some perched beyond the edge of the bluff.
We're still working our way south through Orange County (quick time check - these are all from December 13th). Brooks Street is just one of many street-end beach accesses along this stretch of southern Laguna Beach. I wish I could have stopped at them all, but then I would have had a lot more trouble telling them apart afterwards.
AERIAL VIEW
This beach is just south of Main Beach. The base of the bluffs is anchored by a fairly continuous band of bedrock that encroaches well below the high tide line in some places. I guess this means that the homes may have a somewhat better prognosis than those built on rapidly retreating bluffs and big landslides, but I can't imagine it won't get increasingly exciting in coming decades when big storms arrive on higher tides and El Nino water levels.
For the most part, waves were pretty tame during this trip down the coast, but here they were a little larger and the surfers had definitely figured that out. Maybe they're always bigger here. Or maybe it was a fluke related to the swell direction and the offshore bathymetry.
All of these posts are from Laguna Beach, but this one is from Laguna's Main Beach, right in front of downtown. Unlike the smaller coves tucked into the convoluted coast to the north, this one is much more substantial and extends quite a ways to the south (the next post, from Brooks Street, is sort of part of the same beach.)
AERIAL VIEW
Downtown Laguna Beach, including Main Beach, are built at the mouth of Laguna Canyon, one of the larger drainages in the hills along this coast. That's why the town itself is down near sea level, instead of up on the terraces, and it's why there's room for a big, low-lying park and a wide beach, since there are no bluffs to bump up against. The coastline rises again to the south (towards the next post), although it's a little hard to distinguish the bluffs from the homes and condos built against them.
I'm not sure what the best name for this post is, but the pictures are taken from Heisler Park on Recreation Point in Laguna Beach. The beach to the northwest is Diver's Cove (below). The beach in the other direction may be Picnic Cove (above), though I'm not sure that's what it goes by locally.
AERIAL VIEW
The points along this coastline are defined by more resistant geologic units (here, I think they're volcanics), with the coves backed by bluffs of more erodible sediments. But both erode, even if it's at different rates. I wonder what this coastline will look like in 80 years?
The next several posts step southwards along Laguna Beach's coastline. There are an awful lot of fairly distinct beaches along this stretch, some more accessible than others, but I had only so much time and so much navigational talent. For each that I got to, there were several that I didn't: Victoria Beach, Treasure Island, Shaw's Cove, 1000 Steps. (More on Laguna Beach's Beaches)
AERIAL VIEW
Crescent Bay is a small pocket-like beach. I say pocket-like, because while it is bounded by rocky promontories, I suspect the nearshore sediment system is more continuous than the headlands might indicate. The big waves reach deep and the sand probably extends well offshore. The continuity of the littoral system may be determined as much by offshore bathymetry as it is by the outline of the terrestrial landscape.
As in much of southern California, the Pacific Coast Highway and a bulk of the development lie on a marine terrace (or terraces) - the legacy of a tectonically-active, uplifting coastline. But the development in Laguna Beach, much in the form of expensive homes, tends to extend right to the edge of the terrace and often drapes down over it, sometimes right to the water's edge.
Crystal Cove State Park is a long stretch of largely undeveloped bluffs and beach in the southern part of Newport Beach. The only buildings are down at Crystal Cove proper, where Los Trancos Creek empties out onto the beach.
AERIAL VIEW
The little beach enclave appears to have a long history - with some strong advocates. I haven't sorted out the whole story, but it looks like the Crystal Cove Conservancy is working with California State Parks to restore the old beach cottages on the bluff. The historical preservation part of me finds this wonderful, but the coastal geologist part of me wonders how much effort we should take to preserve structures in unsustainable locations.
But in the meantime, what a neat spot. Besides the places down at the beach, it can also be enjoyed from Ruby's Shake Shack up on the bluff along the road!
The San Diego River (not in San Diego) drains through the completely transformed Newport Bay estuary and out to the ocean in a channel defined on the western (Balboa) side by a long jetty and on the eastern (Corona Del Mar) side by a rocky promontory (and another jetty).
I believe this is all technically part of Newport Beach, although I'm still struggling with the geographic labels down here (most of what I know about the names of southern California beaches comes from Beach Boys songs and Google Maps).
AERIAL VIEW
There were lots of cool beach things to check out - the jetties, the small beach tucked into the rocks on this side, the beautiful beach cusps, and the classic California style hillside homes. These photos are taken from Lookout Point (west) and Inspiration Point (east), as well as down on the beach itself.
