Perego's Lagoon

A series of photos illustrating the role of overwash in shaping barrier beaches is a standard element in many of my beach talks and one of my favorite examples is Perego's Lagoon on the west side of Whidbey Island. This Saturday I was up on Whidbey (at Sound Waters) and just before my presentation, someone mentioned that waves had recently breached that spit.

So I skipped out on the third session of the day and drove up to Ebey's Landing to check it out. Sure enough, there was a small breach in the berm crest near the south end and a fresh deposit of sand, gravel, and logs in the lagoon. This looks pretty small compared to some of the older, preserved ones nearby, but still very neat to visit before it patches itself back together (which it will probably do pretty quickly).

AERIAL VIEW

Although I don't know for sure, this likely occurred on December 20th, when a strong wind storm coincided with a high tide and a strong surge. There have been reports, and numerous videos, showing the fierceness of that storm, particularly in northern Puget Sound (Birch Bay got hit really bad).

Here are some previous posts from Perego's, some of which show the earlier overwash fans quite a bit better:

Gravel Beach: Perego's Lagoon

Birch Bay

The north end of Birch Bay was once a marked by a large complex of spits and marshes. Drift was eastward into the bay, carrying sediment from Birch Point to form a series of spits that terminated in an inlet at the northern corner of the bay. The spits and marshes probably recorded a wonderful chronology of sea level change, geologic events, and early first nations occupation.

AERIAL VIEW

In the late 1960s, it all became Birch Bay Village. The wetlands were dredged to create lakes and a marina. The sediment was used to create dry land for homes and golf. A new inlet to the new marina was cut at the base of the spit and the old inlet was left to drain a very small remnant of the original marsh. Drift rapidly built a broad fillet against the west jetty and the downdrift beaches were starved of their natural source of material (though sediment dredged from the inlet is now periodically bypassed to those beaches). Wolf Bauer and Maury Schwartz both used Birch Bay Village as an example of what not to do to beaches.

These pictures were taken at the inlet and near the west end, where the bluff ends and the spit begins. They show the beach west of the inlet, the jetties, the seawalls east of the inlet, and a remarkably large rock buttress on the first bluff property to the west.

Birch Bay

The northern half of Birch Bay's eastern shoreline is a long curving gravel barrier beach, separating the bay from extensive wetlands farther inland. Birch Bay Drive pretty much follows the original berm and there isn't much high tide beach left - what wasn't buried by the road has eroded away to a narrow strip, much of it covered in riprap or a concrete seawall. Dozens of small groins reflect an early, and not terribly successful, attempt to hold the beach together (Birch Bay - Part Two: March 2015).

AERIAL VIEW

Except for the groins and a few big storm drains, the beach is pretty much continuous and accessible, from the north end south to the mouth of Terrell Creek. South of the creek, things get sort of ugly, but that's another story (Birch Bay - Part One: March 2015). There is one other exception - a notable one.

M and I had a Sunday afternoon appointment in Blaine and stopped in here for lunch beforehand. It was quiet and our table was just a few feet above the beach - and considerably seaward of the high water line. This might be pretty exciting on a stormy day, but I guess that's why they have those shutters that can be pulled up to cover the lower portion of the windows. Keeps the gravel from breaking the glass, the salt water off the carpet, and the logs from landing on the tables.

There are major plans to rehabilitate the beach in next year or two, fulfilling portions of a vision Wolf Bauer laid out almost 40 years ago. He imagined a wonderful public beach stretching along this entire shoreline -- I guess they'll sort of have to build it around this place.

Birch Bay - Part Two

Another post from Birch Bay, this one a little farther north along Birch Bay Drive. Unlike the residential section in the previous post, here the road follows the beach, the development is landward of the road, and the beach is both public and accessible. Unfortunately, the roadway itself and subsequent erosion has left little of the original backshore and the upper beach is littered with old seawalls, riprap, and a long series of concrete groins. It's a mess.

In the 1970s, Wolf Bauer (who just celebrated his 103rd birthday) proposed an ambitious gravel berm and enhanced public right-of-way along this stretch. Now, 40 years later, a somewhat scaled back version may actually get built. Funding has been found, plans have been drawn up, and maybe in a couple of years we'll get a new beach, a big boost for the community, and a road that doesn't get pummeled with gravel every time a storm comes through.

AERIAL VIEW

Previous posts:
March 2010
March 2009

Birch Bay - Part One

I read recently that although blogs have few rules, one should always endeavor to post regularly. Hah! Collecting beaches is a hobby. Sometimes work, family, or even other hobbies, can intervene. Sometimes I fall behind. In some cases, I simply don't get to the beach. In others, I get to the beach, but can't seem to find time to post. In the last month, my shoreline trips have been few (and often gray and drizzly) and my distractions have been many, so a number of potential posts have simply stacked up in a pile of JPGs on my hard drive.  I will try to dribble a few out over the next few days.

AERIAL VIEW

This is the first of two posts from Birch Bay - collected on a trip to Whatcom County several weeks ago. Birch Bay opens to the west onto the Strait of Georgia and its inner shoreline forms a broad crescent, formed and reinforced by refracting waves. Longshore drift along the bay's beaches is generally from south to north, helping to explain why the mouth of Terrell Creek is deflected almost two miles north by a long spit.

The stream-mouth spit begins in the State Park, but its northern half was developed ages ago and is lined with beach houses and bulkheads.  The encroachment of the structures across the upper beach is probably due in part to how they were originally built and in part to the progressive erosion of the beach itself -- either way, there's not much high tide beach left along here!

Wolf Bauer

West Point 2004

Golden Gardens 2011

Seacrest 2011

Brackett's Landing 2009

Ambleside 2011

Tolmie 2009

West Point 2010

Birch Bay 2010 

24 February 2012

Wolf,

As you begin your second century, I wanted to remind you of what an amazing difference you have made for Puget Sound shorelines and for the people who visit them.

You were instrumental in raising awareness of shorelines and in creating a demand for shoreline protection.  Today, it’s easy to take our beautiful beaches for granted, but without the amazing efforts of you and others in the early 1970s, this place would be a very unattractive place.  Your language and your ideas have remained lasting elements of Shoreline Master Programs across the state.

You described accretion beaches as an endangered species.  At the time, you may have doubted our progress, and it’s true that we have lost some special places.  But thanks to your work, many remain intact and more are becoming public.  Lily Point on Point Roberts is now a county park.

In the 1980s you spoke adamantly of the need to restore our urban beaches and to enhance the public’s shoreline experience.  But you did not just talk about it, you gave us examples.  Today, we have examples everywhere: in Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton, and elsewhere.  And there are a new generation of projects such as the Sculpture Park Beach in Seattle and Marine Park in Fairhaven that were inspired by your example and carried out by impassioned individuals who had learned from you.

People enjoy our most spectacular urban beaches, yet many do not realize that these places were once buried in riprap and would be still were it not for your efforts.  People love the beaches at Discovery Park, Golden Gardens, Birch Bay, West Vancouver, and Tolmie State Park.  They think these places have always been this nice!

This year, we are mapping feeder bluffs throughout the Sound – the feeder bluffs that you taught us were such a critical element of the shore-process corridor.  Also this year, I was approached about what to do about salt marshes choked with cut logs from decades of sloppy log-rafting practices.  I jumped at the chance to share your presentation on this subject from almost two decades ago.

Increasingly, parks managers and and government regulators and fish biologists are looking for opportunities to restore beaches and to put sediment back into the system, not lock it away behind walls of rock.  People still build bulkheads, but doing so is widely discouraged and is increasingly difficult. In some places we are actually pulling seawalls off the beach and removing riprap from our spits.

Your legacy runs deep on Puget Sound and our shorelines are far, far better places today than they ever would have been without your incredible passion and your tireless commitment.

Thank you,

Hugh

NOTE:  Wolf turned 100 on February 24th. These photos, most taken recently, are all nourished beaches designed by Wolf in the 1970s and 1980s. Their captions link (in most cases) to previous posts on those places. Previous Gravel Beach posts mentioning Wolf can be found at:  Bauer Posts.

Gulf Road

Just a few miles and twenty minutes south of Birch Bay and what a difference. Wind and waves and a very different beach.

Gulf Road is the only place you can really get down to the shoreline in the vicinity of Cherry Point - unless you're an oil tanker or an aluminum ingot. Unlike the rest of Puget Sound, where high-end residential development is creeping along the shoreline like mold, this stretch was set aside decades ago for industrial uses and is marked by three large piers, two attached to refineries and one attached to an aluminum plant running on our famously inexpensive electricity. Ironically, the industrial designation may be what saves these beaches from being nickeled and dimed over the next few decades, although a little more public access would sure be nice.

This section of beach is actually a barrier, with wetlands behind and a small stream mouth at the north end.

Birch Bay

Just like last year, a workshop in Blaine provided me a chance to swing home via Birch Bay (March, 2009). And just like last year, I'm going to keep my comments short, despite the amount that could be written about this fascinating part of Puget Sound (Georgia Strait, more precisely, or the Salish Sea).

This afternoon's theme is gravel swash bars. They happen to be located on a very long stream mouth spit on an elegant log spiral beach and one of the pictures is on a gravel beach built by Wolf Bauer almost three decades ago.

Birch Bay

Birch Bay is a complicated story of beaches and coastal history and would take longer to tell clearly than I have time tonight. Maybe another time - either added to this post or in a new post. But meanwhile, here are groins, seawalls, and a mile of state park.

Skyline

This was once Flounder Bay, southwest of Anacortes. It is now Skyline Marina and the surrounding community (click on the title of the post to see the aerial). In the 1920s, there was a huge lumber mill built over the beach, remnants of which are still visible. Later there was a seaplane base. And in the late 1960's modern Skyline began to take form. It is one of several "canal" style developments that occurred during that period - others include Lagoon Point on Whidbey, Shelter Cove in La Conner, and Birch Bay Village. All were originally large coastal wetlands.


The historic maps show the original inlet to Flounder Bay at it's western, downdrift end, but at some point, the inlet was moved to the eastern end (never let nature get in the way of convenience). The eastern jetties isolate the spit from it's sediment source. In addition, the extensive fill placed on the spit probably buried whatever sand-gravel beach once existed. All that's left in front of the seawall is a starved cobble beach and old riprap. Maybe it's a good thing that the public access is limited! In another place and time, this would still be a natural spit and salt marsh and a park or it would be a developed spit with a destination resort, lots of public access, and a great beach. Either of which would be preferable to what we ended up with.