Glass bay in Vladivostok. Glass Beach in California's McKerricher Park - Trash Creates Beauty

In the summer heat, each of us dreams of cooling off in sea ​​water, and in the winter cold - soak up the rays of the gentle sun. Therefore, both in winter and in summer, many people want to be on the beach. Some imagine a coast with soft sand, others - a pebbly third - a rocky wild corner of nature. But it is unlikely that anyone will see a glass beach in their dreams. And in California it really exists! Unusual place is in small town Fort Bragg.

And it all began in the forties of the twentieth century. Then, from all over the city, garbage began to be dumped on the territory of the present beach. As a result, a huge public dump was formed. Everything was here: from household trash to decommissioned cars. Giant mountains of garbage, heaps of broken glass, piles of plastic waste eventually reached critical sizes. They were simply burned. This went on for more than twenty years, until in 1967 the city authorities, having discovered threatening land and water, decided to close the city dump. Programs were developed aimed at restoring the local nature, and the territory was finally cleared of bulky debris. But small broken glass remained, and here nature took care of itself.

The surf painstakingly honed each sharp piece of glass and turned the piles of glass into myriads of colored smooth pebbles of various sizes and shapes. The ocean has done a truly brilliant job: it has eliminated the disgrace committed on its shore by people, and turned the landfill into a unique clean sea ​​coast. So there was a glass beach in California. Photos of this place are simply mesmerizing - the coast in the sun shines with all the colors and shades of the rainbow. It's incredibly beautiful!

Local residents quickly took a fancy to the area. That's what they called it - Glass Beach. In California, the town of Fort Bragg is very popular - residents of the entire state come here on vacation. Tourists from other parts of the United States also strive to visit the amazing coast, and foreign travelers. Everyone who was lucky enough to visit Glass Beach in California wanted to take at least one colored stone with them as a souvenir. The polished glass pieces were quickly taken away by tourists, and local craftsmen got the hang of making beautiful bracelets and necklaces out of them.

In 2002, Glass Beach (USA) was purchased by McKerricher National Park and turned into an inimitable exotic corner open to the public. Since then, it has been forbidden to take unusual pebbles from here, but this ban is often violated, because every visitor wants to take a beautiful piece of glass as a keepsake. Not only people do not want to obey the order of the authorities, but also crabs living in coastal waters. They use multi-colored building material with great pleasure to build their homes.

Here is such a story! The glass beach in California is a real miracle of nature, a beauty made of garbage, pleasing to the eye and taking you to the world of childhood, at the time of fabulous dreams, when we all believed that you could find precious gems among ordinary ones!

This amazing glass beach in McKerricher National Park in California created by people together with nature! Strong waves did their best to create such beauty from the glass fragments of the former landfill - the entire beach is covered with "precious gems" that shimmer with all sorts of colors in the sun.

Where is the glass beach

Glass Beach located in McKerricher National Park(MacKerricher State Park) near the city of Fort Bragg (Fort Bragg) in California, USA. For your convenience, we have marked the glass beach on the map below. How to get to the glass beach at the end of the article.

The history of glass beach formation

The history of the formation of a glass beach really deserves special attention, as this is a real miracle that nature does with the consumer attitude of mankind! Once upon a time there was a city dump And locals brought all sorts of rubbish here. In 1967 local authorities took up the cleaning of the polluted beach and carried out a series of cleaning works. Of course, it was not possible to remove everything “under clean” and a lot of broken glass remained on the shore, which was subject to grinding by waves, and after some 10 years the former landfill became a local landmark and popular place, which tourists began to add to their route list.

Since 2002, the territory of the former landfill has come under the jurisdiction national park McCrricher. The garbage that was not processed by nature was removed by people themselves, which made the beach even more attractive.

Description of glass beach

The glass beach itself is not big size. The beach is protected from all sides by rocks, which you will have to climb to set foot on this stunning beach, which is dotted with glass of different colors: green, white, red, blue, bright blue. In the rock, strong waves over time knocked out grottoes and lintels, which add a special mystery to the place.

The most beautiful glass pieces are located directly near the ocean. When the glass gets wet, they become brighter, while dry glass is somewhat cloudy.

Photos of the glass beach:

glass beach in summer time visited by thousands of tourists who, of course, want to take a few glass souvenirs with them as a keepsake. In this regard, the amount of glass on the beach is getting smaller and smaller every year. At the moment, a program has been developed to fill the beach with processed glass, but the local authorities do not accept it in view of its high cost. So hurry up to visit it amazing place until negligent tourists “drag the whole beach”!

How to get to glass beach

Walking distance to the glass beach(200 meters), descending from the steep bank from the intersection of W Elm St and Glass Beach Drive (Glass Beach Dr). There is a convenient car park where you can leave your vehicle which is very convenient.

Glass Beach in California is a monument to the natural industriousness of our planet. From day to day, from year to year, from century to century, nature tries to cleanse itself of human waste products. The glass beach is a vivid confirmation of this.

As you know, man is the largest producer of garbage in the universe. All places of his stay are abundantly littered with mountains of waste. Humanity, even in space, managed to spoil leaving traces of itself. To which our planet, having gritted its teeth and rewarded stupid people with a couple of earthquakes and floods, began to carefully and scrupulously restore order. One example of the work of the "Earth Cleaning Service" is a glass beach in California.

Glass Beach on the map

• geographic coordinates 39.453066, -123.813657
• distance from the US capital Washington about 4000 km
• distance to the nearest airport Sacramento is approximately 210 km

The history of Glass Beach dates back to the 40s of the last century, when residents of the nearby town of Fort Bragg began to massively throw garbage directly into the ocean from a cliff. And somehow they didn’t think about the fact that it could harm the world around them.
But in 1967, there were still citizens in the government who, suspecting something was wrong, forbade residents to throw garbage in these places. As a result, nature itself, in just a few decades, created an amazing Glass Beach from the mountains of garbage.


Now at this place you can observe the most beautiful phenomenon - the mountains of the once broken glass turned into placers of "rubies", "sapphires", "emeralds" and "diamonds". polished ocean waves smooth pieces of glass mixed with sand and pebbles and abundantly filled the space of the beach. And naturally this fact attracted the attention of the California organization National parks, which in 2002 bought the coast and made it part of the MacKerricher National Park. It must be said that apart from precious stones» You can sometimes see other debris, for example, parts of cars corroded by rust, but this happens less and less every day, as park employees periodically help nature and remove very unsightly debris, leaving the glass alone. Tourists from all over the world flocked to the Glass Beach. And although the "stealing" of multi-colored glass pebbles is strictly prohibited, many travelers still take them with them as a keepsake.
According to scientists, the period of glass decomposition is about 1000 years. In just a thousand years, there will be an ordinary sand beach(or unusual, such as, for example, the luminous beach on the island of Vaadhoo), but for now you have a little time to visit this unique natural-human creation.
Perhaps someday a person will begin to realize the uniqueness of our planet and still begin to protect and help it. For example, in China, in the famous Reed Flute Cave, people only slightly focused on its natural beauty. So, not everything is lost yet.

Glass Beach is in MacKerricher State Park near Fort Bragg(Fort Bragg) California State, . The beach got its name due to the fact that it is covered with many glass pebbles, it is a landmark of the city.

Local residents, considering this place a dump, threw garbage on it - household waste, old household appliances, cars, glass. In 1967, the authorities closed the beach and carried out work to clean it up several times. Uncleaned small pieces of glass were polished by waves and gradually the entire coast was strewn with thousands of multi-colored glass. The North Coast Water Quality Board has banned the dumping of garbage at this site.

For several decades, nature itself sorted out the landfill: there was no trace of the former garbage mountains. Sea waves cleared the beach and sharpened every piece of glass on the coast. As a result, the shape of the glass pebbles is no different from the usual pebbles for us, and now billions of pieces of glass strew the entire coast, which is called Glass Beach.

In 2002, McKerricher Park acquired the Glass Coast. It has been cleaned up and is open to tourists who, for a nominal fee, can admire this amazing place. Crowds of tourists rushed to look at this amazing beach. There were even craftsmen who make all kinds of souvenirs from these smooth glass pieces, which are well bought up by tourists who come to see this miracle of industrial human intervention in the affairs of nature. Despite the official ban, many tourists try to take some glass pebbles as a souvenir of Glass Beach.

According to various sources, glass decomposes from 500 to 1000 years, that is, after a maximum of a thousand years, the incredible Glass Beach will turn into ordinary sandy one. But now it's one of the most beautiful places and the first unique beach, composed by man and nature.

Unique place -. The uniqueness of the bay is that it strewn with pieces of broken glass, in fact, this is a glass beach, on which sand, glass and pebbles are mixed. Unfortunately, the uniqueness of this bay is the result of human pollution of nature, because. once these beautiful glass pieces were ordinary bottles.

So where is the glass from in the Steklyannaya Bay or in the common people Glass, two versions history of education glass bay in Vladivostok first says that two truckloads of bottles were once dumped on the beach, second the version is that a kilometer from the beach there was a Gornostai household waste dump, which was cultivated and closed on the eve of the APEC 2012 summit, the bottles from this dump were carried over towards the beach and smashed against the rocks, and Glass Bay was formed. The second version seems more plausible to me.

The beach in Glass Bay is not the only one there are only two such beaches in the world, the second is located in Fort Bragg California USA. The history of the formation of the beach in the United States is the same as in Vladivostok, once there was a landfill on the site of the beach, and after its closure, a pile of broken glass remained. True, if you look at the photos of the glass beach in the USA and here in Vladivostok, then judging by the photo, their bottles are more colorful.

Having visited this beach for the first time several years ago, we were slightly shocked, firstly, from the glass we saw on the beach, and secondly, from the smell and smoke that continuously came from the nearby landfill, while there were many vacationers here . It was affected by the fact that people simply had nowhere to rest in Vladivostok, but with the opening of the bridge to the Russian Island and the closing of the landfill on Gornostai, the number of available places for recreation increased. Now the Gornostai Recruited Solid Waste Landfill has become an ordinary green-flowering mountain, nothing like a former landfill. This place has become a landmark of the city and now you can safely go to rest in the nearby bays.

Now glass bay is good place for relax. The beach is clean and cleaned regularly. The beach has everything for relaxation: shower, toilet, sports and playgrounds, houses, gazebos, places for tents for rent. There is a lifeguard and a paramedic on the beach (at least that's what the sign at the entrance to the beach says).

Glass bay pretty cozy place , which is closed on both sides by rocks, on the beach itself the sand is of an unusual dark color, and closer to the water is sand with pebbles and glass. You can walk along the beach without fear of walking barefoot, because. the broken glass was polished by the sea with its waves and a beautiful unusual beach turned out.

On both sides of the beach Glasses are located beautiful rocks, and on the left side of the beach there is a view of the sliding rocks, which slope down into the sea.

Where is Glass Bay located?

The beach in Steklyannaya Bay is located in the suburbs of Vladivostok between the village of Rybachy and Desantnaya Bay, see the location